refugee, IDP, evacuee

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED gives "displaced person" as one of the recognized senses of "refugee."  But surely exx. must be available before 1914 ?

The word cranks, bless them, may have fallen prey to the etymological fallacy, however. The earliest OED sense (and maybe the definition was overly specific: worth a review, Jesse !) specifies "one who seeks refuge in a foreign country."

The reason for that is that "refugee" in English was first applied to the French Huguenots.

I stick by my opinion that anyone who would object stridently and publicly to the word "refugee" in the midst of a natural catastrophe is semi-educated.

Or over-educated, as the case may be.

JL

Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Paul Frank

Subject: refugee, IDP, evacuee
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Isn't the word refugee usually reserved to talk about people who flee for
refuge in a foreign country? In Eritrea, where I was living until a few
months ago, English speakers used the unwieldy term "internally displaced
person" to refer to internal refugees. Unfortunately, the situation is so
bad in Eritrea that there are also more and more refugees from Eritrea to
Sudan and Ethiopia. Most Americans are probably not familiar with the term
IDP, so I guess evacuee is more accurate than refugee. Perhaps this is a
pedantic distinction. The federal government's criminal negligence of the
plight of (poor and mostly black) American victims of this disaster is
another matter...

Paul
______________________________________
Paul Frank
Chinese-English translation: social sciences
German-English translation: sinology
French-English translation: sinology
paulfrank at post.harvard.edu

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