2005's Politically Incorrect Words/Phrases

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The Top Politically inCorrect Words and Phrases for  2005: 
1. Misguided Criminals for Terrorist:  The BBC attempts to strip  away all 
emotion by using what it considers ‘neutral’ descriptions when  describing 
those who carried out the bombings in the London Tubes.  The  rub:  the professed 
intent of these ‘misguided criminals’ was to kill,  without warning, as many 
innocents as possible (which is the common definition  for the term, 
terrorist). 
2. Intrinsic Aptitude (or lack thereof) was a suggestion by Lawrence  
Summers, the president of Harvard, on why women might be underrepresented in  
engineering and science.  He was nearly fired for his speculation. 
3. Thought Shower or Word Shower substituting for brainstorm so as not  to 
offend those with brain disorders such as epilepsy. 
4. Scum or "la racaille" for French citizens of Moslem and North African  
descent inhabiting the projects ringing French Cities.  France's Interior  
Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, used this most politically inCorrect (and  reprehensible) 
label to describe the young rioters (and by extension all the  inhabitants of 
the ‘Cites’).   
5. Out of the Mainstream when used to describe the ideology of any  political 
opponent:  At one time slavery was in the mainstream, thinking  the sun 
orbited the earth was in the mainstream, having your blood sucked out by  leeches 
was in the mainstream.  What’s so great about being in the  mainstream? 
6. Deferred Success as a euphemism for the word ‘fail’.  The  Professional 
Association of Teachers in the UK considered a proposal to replace  any notion 
of failure with ‘deferred success’ in order to bolster students’  ‘
self-esteem’. 
7. Womyn for Women to distance the word from ‘man’.  This in spite  of the 
fact that the term ‘man’ in the original Indo-European is gender neutral  (as 
have been its successors for some 5,000 years).   
8. C.E. for A.D.:  Is the current year A.D. 2005 or 2005  C.E.?   There is a 
movement to strip A.D. (Latin for Year of our Lord)  from the year designation 
used in the West since the 5th century and replace it  with the supposedly 
more neutral Common Era  (though the zero reference  year for the beginning of 
the Common Era remains the year of Christ’s  birth). 
9. “God Rest Ye Merry Persons” for “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”:   A 
Christmas, eh, Holiday, carol with 500 years of history is not enough to sway  the 
Anglican Church at Cardiff Cathedral (Wales) from changing the original  
lyrics. 
10. Banning the word Mate:  the Department of Parliamentary  Services in 
Canberra issued a general warning to its security staff banning the  use of the 
word 'mate' in any dealings they might have with both members of the  Parliament 
and the public. What next? banning Down Under so as not to offend  those 
living in the ‘Up Over’. 
Holiday Bonus:  Happy Holidays or Season's Greetings for Christmas  (which in 
some UK schools now label Wintervale.  (In the word X-Mas, the  Greek letter ‘
Chi” represented by the Roman X actually stands for the first two  letters of 
the name Christ.)   
Last year the Top Politically Incorrect words were:  Los Angeles  County’s 
insistence of covering over with labels any computer networking  protocols that 
mention master/slave jargon.  Following closely were  non-same sex marriage 
for marriage, and waitron for waiter or  waitress.