sped = special ed

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 3:26 PM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>
> Isn't the idea simply that those regarded as "smart" in one group might
> appear "dumb" in another group?
>
> In Georgia in the early 1980s, my elementary-school-aged son and his peers
> commonly employed the insult "You L.D.!"  "L.D." meant 'learning disabled' in
> the public-education parlance of the day.  There we see the common process
> of a euphemism's developing into a disparagement.

Similar pejoration occurred in the UK with "Scope", the charity
formerly known as the Spastics Society (changed because "spastic" is
now considered offensive). The new name resulted in a new insult:
"scopers".

Discussed in an update to my Language Log post on "spaz":
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003020.html


--Ben Zimmer

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