You're an ethnic slur!

[Neal Whitman]

Now on Visual Thesaurus, with a reference to this thread and a link to
Arnold's post:
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/dictionary/3228/

Not mentioned in the article: Of the top 10 adjectival collocates
immediately before "slur" in COCA, 8 involve race, religion, sex, or sexual
orientation. Of them, only 1 ("racial") makes the top 10 for "insult". Five
make the top 10 for "epithet" (racist, racial, ethnic, homophobic,
anti-gay), as well as "socioeconomic".

Neal

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben Zimmer" <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 4:17 PM
Subject: Re: You're an ethnic slur!


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: You're an ethnic slur!
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 4:06 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:
>>
>> Probably because of the "slur" thread that began here last month (see
>> link
>> at bottom), I got to thinking about a phrasing I heard on NPR this
>> morning:
>> "called him an ethnic slur." I pictured someone telling someone else,
>> "You
>> ethnic slur!" or "You're an ethnic slur, you know that?" If it had been
>> written, as "called him a[n ethnic slur]," that wouldn't be so strange,
>> but
>> in spoken English, it reminds me of actually saying things like
>> "expletive
>> deleted" or "beeeeep" in avoidance of taboo language.
>
> Surely influenced by "to call (someone) a name" or "to call (someone)
> names."
> OED only has the latter under _call_:
>
> ---
> 17 c. _to call names_ : to apply opprobrious names or epithets to (a
> person).
> (Cf. 12.)
> [1597   Shakespeare Richard III i. iii. 234   That thou hadst cald me all
> these
> bitter names.]
> 1697   W. Dampier New Voy. around World v. 117   They‥content
> themselves
> with standing aloof, threatning and calling names.
> 1712   R. Steele Spectator No. 274. ⁋1   Calling Names does no Good.
> 1854   H. Miller Schools & Schoolmasters (1860) xxii. 233/2   He replied
> to my
> jokes by calling names.
> 1884   Times (Weekly ed.) 5 Sept. 3/1   They were not in the habit of
> calling
> one another names.
> ---
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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