farmer & peasant

[David A. Daniel]

You can be a peasant without it necessarily being insulting, though it
usually is now. But boor is definitely something you don't want to be, and
also was originally a farmer. Perhaps at some future date "farmer" itself
will be an insult and people who grow stuff will be agribusinessmen or some
such, which at some future date will become an insult, etc and so forth.
DAD

If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Joel S. Berson
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 10:20 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: farmer & peasant



At 7/21/2010 04:32 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>As for "farmer" as an insult, there is a perfectly good "peasant" that
>is used either a denomination of something rustic (e.g., peasant bread)
>or is, in fact, an insult. AFAIK, there has always been a semantic
>distinction between "farmer" and "peasant".

If you were English, you were a farmer; if you were French, you were
a peasant.  (According to the free and independent English.)

Joel

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