Ameliorated words of offensive origin

[Gregory {Greg} Downing]

At 05:00 PM 2/27/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>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.
>

You might want to take a look at whatever historical or etymological info
you have to hand re, for example, "Tory" amd "Whig." Trench (FWIW) stated
that the political usage of both words eventually became neutral or
positive, although the original meaning had been offensive. The two words
appear to have begun life in English as pejorative terms employed in,
respectively, Ireland and Scotland, for people whose religious and political
affiliations were disapproved of. Note what OED2 says about those two words.

The oldest OED sense of Tory:

1. a. In the 17th c., one of the dispossessed Irish, who became outlaws,
subsisting by plundering and killing the English settlers and soldiers; a
bog-trotter, a rapparee; later, often applied to any Irish Papist or
Royalist in arms. Obs. exc. Hist.


The oldest OED2 senses of Whig:

1. A yokel, country bumpkin. Obs. rare.

2. An adherent of the Presbyterian cause in Scotland in the seventeenth
century; applied orig. to the Covenanters in the West of Scotland who in
1648 wrested the government from the Royalist party and marched as rebels to
Edinburgh; in later years, to the extreme section of the Covenanting party
who were regarded as rebels. Hist.


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

Yes, I meant to add at the end of that last posting that so much of this
kind of discussion goes back to popular writing about language that, however
factually flawed it now appears with regrad to many of its details and
assumptions, was often based fairly solidly on the scientific linguistic
work of the nineteenth century! Nothing new under ths sun, so they say....



Greg Downing, at greg.downing at nyu.edu or gd2 at nyu.edu