[Ads-l] Cancel Culture

Shapiro, Fred fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Fri Jul 31 20:26:53 UTC 2020


I think an important newish term is "cancel culture," meaning a culture of public shaming.  The earliest I see in LexisNexis for this term is the following:

  *
Simone Biles defends one teammate after another's misguided comment about sexual assault <https://advance.lexis.com/document/?pdmfid=1000516&crid=20ad3ca8-e5cc-4a43-8806-c4acbadb46f6&pddocfullpath=%2Fshared%2Fdocument%2Fnews%2Furn%3AcontentItem%3A5R2D-T6R1-JBCN-43NM-00000-00&pdcontentcomponentid=401989&pdteaserkey=sr4&pditab=allpods&ecomp=gxdsk&earg=sr4&prid=5bf88536-5cb8-49b7-99d4-e7e95cc4be94>

Mashable.com Nov 18, 2017 BUSINESS 573 words Emma Hinchliffe

... seemed to be a learning experience for her. Let's talk " cancel culture ." Personally, I am willing to give a lot of grace ...<https://advance.lexis.com/search?crid=5bf88536-5cb8-49b7-99d4-e7e95cc4be94&pdsearchterms=%22cancel%20culture%22&pdtypeofsearch=urlapi&pdfiltertext=urn%3Ahlct%3A5%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A15%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A3%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A2%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A4%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A1%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A10%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A16%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A14%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A8%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A13%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A12%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A9%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A6%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A7%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A18%2Curn%3Ahlct%3A11&pdsearchtype=dynand&pdmfid=1000516&pdisurlapi=true#>



There is a little bit of usage of the words "cancel culture" in LexisNexis prior to that, but I think those occurrences are coincidental and have different meanings.


I have not attempted to trace the parent use of "cancel" as a verb meaning to publicly shame someone.


Fred Shapiro


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