[Ads-l] "sanewashing"

[Nancy Friedman]

Thanks, Ben! I've updated my post about "sanewashing":
https://fritinancy.substack.com/p/word-of-the-week-sanewashing

Good WotW candidate!


Nancy Friedman
Chief Wordworker
web: wordworking.com <http://www.wordworking.com>
substack https://fritinancy.substack.com/
Medium <https://medium.com/@wordworking>

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On Wed, Sep 11, 2024 at 12:21 PM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:

> The rhetorician Dale Carrico used "sanewashing" in an Oct. 2007 blog post
> and has been credited by others with the coinage.
>
> ---
>
> https://amormundi.blogspot.com/2007/10/sanewashing-superlativity-for-more.html
> Dale Carrico, _Amor Mundi_ (blog), Oct. 26, 2007
> "Sanewashing Superlativity (For a More Gentle Seduction)"
> Far more amusing than his denials and efforts at organizational sanewashing
> go, however, is his concluding admonishment of those -- oh, so few! --
> transhumanists or Singularitarians who might be vulnerable to accusations
> of Superlativity.
> ---
> http://www.softmachines.org/wordpress/?p=356
> Richard Jones, _Soft Machines_ (blog), Oct. 30, 2007
> It’s good that Michael recognises the danger of the situation I identify,
> but some other comments on his blog suggest to me that what he is doing
> here is, in Carrico’s felicitous phrase, _sanewashing_ the transhumanist
> and singularitarian movements with which he is associated.
> ---
> https://thebaffler.com/salvos/everybody-freeze-pein
> Corey Pein, "Everybody Freeze!", _The Baffler_, Mar. 2016
> There was another important factor in the sane-washing[***] of cryonics.
> [***] Credit goes to University of California-Berkeley lecturer in rhetoric
> Dale Carrico for this coinage.
> ---
>
> --bgz
>
> On Fri, Sep 6, 2024 at 10:59 AM Nancy Friedman <wordworking at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Portraying something to appear more rational than it actually is (sane +
> > whitewashing).
> >
> > "The Press Response to Trump's Word Salad Answer Is Peak Sanewashing"
> > (Parker Molloy, September 6)
> > https://www.readtpa.com/p/the-press-response-to-trumps-word
> >
> > "From Rambling to Rational: The Media's Trump Sanewashing Problem"
> > (Parker Molloy, The New Republic, September 4)
> >
> >
> https://www.yahoo.com/news/rambling-rational-media-trump-sanewashing-100000571.html
> >
> > Appeared in 2022 in reference to a Reddit /r/antiwork discussion:
> >
> >
> https://tracingwoodgrains.medium.com/r-antiwork-a-tragedy-of-sanewashing-and-social-gentrification-56298af1c1a7
> >
> > Urban Dictionary, April 22, 2022:
> > https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sanewashing
> >
> > I wrote earlier this year about another novel -washing coinage,
> > "smallwashing," and included links to other -washing compounds:
> > https://fritinancy.substack.com/p/word-of-the-week-smallwashing
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org