Language and umbrage

Take the word “hooligan” as a first example. A hooligan is “a young street rough, a member of a street gang,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and is often associated with violent, drunken, rowdy behavior, especially in connection to soccer games. The first recorded use of “hooligan” is in regard to the Hooligan Gang, a gang of related Irish youths in south London known for being troublemakers, who took their name from the Irish name of Houlihan or O’Houlihan. This means that when one calls someone a hooligan, one is using an epithet for drunken Irish troublemakers. Racist? Definitely.

Some readers are now saying “Come on guys, that’s not that bad,” which brings me to my second politically incorrect word: guy. Yes, the term applicable to any male is offensive. Guy originates from the name Guy Fawkes, also known as Guido, who tried to blow up himself and the English Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 in an attempt to start a Catholic revolution. Understandably, the English celebrate Fawkes’s failure with fireworks, bonfires and the burning of effigies of Fawkes. Much like Disney, the English made their villain as grotesque as possible, leading to the second-earliest definition of “guy,” according to the OED: “A person of grotesque appearance.” This meaning of the word predates the use of “guy” to refer to any male by some 50 years, meaning that people thought it okay to start calling men grotesque in friendly conversation. Sexist? Very.

Some readers will now protest, “But Chris, you’re just being hysterical,” which is again sexist. “Hysteria” comes from the Greek word for uterus, because doctors thought hysteria was a female problem. Since doctors took the anecdotal evidence that women were the hysterical ones (evidence most likely heard from men), they naturally presumed hysteria must have something to do with a woman’s reproductive organs. Chauvinist? Quite.

In a similar vein, “retard” has also evolved in meaning and connotation. In its original meaning, dating back to the 16th century, “to retard” was to slow down or delay the progress of. Circa 1900, teaching and medical professionals began to use “retardation” to describe someone “whose educational progress or level of attainment has fallen behind that expected for his or her age” or someone “displaying or characterized by developmental delay or learning difficulties,” according to the OED. By the late 1950s, “retard” gained its modern usage as a synonym of stupid or moron as it began to lose favor with medical professionals, who began preferring other terms. There is no doubt that the derogatory meaning of “retard” stems from its educational and medical usage, but once again, this is unimportant.

Medical professionals have for the most part moved away from using “mental retardation” as a medical term because the term was never accurate. That term does not acknowledge the fact that some afflicted people simply think differently and may have savant abilities unattainable by the average person. For the most part, “retardation” has remained in medical use only in the United States and has almost entirely disappeared in the rest of the English-speaking world. Its implication, that those afflicted have systematically inferior cognitive functions, reflects an archaic way of thinking.

But when people say “retard” today, one gets the general sense that they no longer think of its medical and educational implications. If someone were to call me a retard, they are not referring to my educational history and how I am a year older than the average sophomore (an educationally correct interpretation of “retard”). No, they mean to call me extremely stupid. Retard first and foremost connotes stupid, with all association with mental disabilities quickly disappearing.

Once, the word “moron” meant the same as mental retardation, with a specific definition of an IQ below 70. Now, calling someone a moron is not going to elicit much of an indignant response. The word moron points the way for the future of “retard”: At some point in the future, people will completely forget retard’s intermediate meaning and again associate it as a synonym of moron. Avoiding hurt feelings is important, but I do not believe this trend can or should be stopped. The sooner we are willing to accept the difference between the word’s etymology and its contemporary meaning, the sooner we can accept the English language for what it is. If we cannot or will not, we must be prepared either to stop using the words guy, hysteria, hooligan, moron and many others, or to offend the world with everyday English. I’m willing to bet that for most of you, it’s not.

Christopher Troein is a sophomore from Windsor, England. He can be reached at ctroein@princeton.edu.