Ethnic-based terms of contempt

Mark Mandel thnidu at GMAIL.COM
Fri Feb 27 02:38:05 UTC 2009


On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 7:49 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> At 6:28 PM -0500 2/26/09, Mark Mandel wrote:
>>On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 4:01 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>> Â At 3:42 PM -0500 2/26/09, Bill Palmer wrote:
 Â ...
>>>>How many others are there? ? I'm wondering if=20
>>>>this is uniquely American. ? Probably not, but=20
>>>>are we more predisposed to it?
...
[Larry @ 4:01]]
>>> Â Many many. ? I posted on this a few years back and=20
>>> Â suggested calling them "ethnonyms".

[Mark @ 6:28 -- the "@" may look weird, but damn if I want that to look
 like a Gospel reference!]
>>Except that "ethnonym" has a well-established use as "A proper name by
>>which a people or ethnic group is known; spec. one which it calls
>>itself." (OED) For the latter subsense I prefer "aut(o)ethnonym".
...
[Larry @ 7:49]
> For all I know, someone else called something else "ironym" too, but
> I don't know for a fact that they did.
>
> LH
>
> P.S. Â Where did those =20's come from?

Our carrier-pigeon-based listserver, is my guess. That's how it showed
up in my inbox.

m a m

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