Ameliorated words of offensive origin

[Jesse Sheidlower]

>
> Your examples all appeared to be sexual, but if your definition of
> "offensive" is a bit wider, I've recently glanced back through Trench's _On
> the Study of Words_ (1851), that classic of Victorian popular philology,
> where a passage in Chapter II discusses words formerly employed in
> pejorative senses but more recently used neutrally or positively: Whig,
> Tory, Prime Minister, Lutheran, Methodist, Capuchin, etc. Of course, I
> haven't checked to see that all his historical information, now a
> century-and-a-half old, still holds up.

Interesting. They don't have to be sexual examples, but what I'm looking
for are words where the original or etymological meaning is something
offensive (if there were racially opprobrious words that are now ameliorated,
that would be OK too), not where the original _usage_ was disparaging or
pejorative.

But Trench's discussion is useful, and I might quote part of it. Thanks.

JTS