That's just one new pejoration as AI and quantum computing escalates.
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One such moment came when Adrian Florido of NPR's "Code Switch" podcast, citing the linguistic term "pejoration" (the process by which certain expressions become socially unacceptable), asked whether "alt-right" was simply a race-neutral term for what used to be called white supremacy.
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Bryan, Eric. (2017). The Moon Glides, Death Rides: Pejoration and Aborted Otherworldly Journeys in "The Dead Bridegroom Carries off his Bride" (ATU 365). 16. 13-30.Lindow, John. "Nordic Legends of the Churchyard".
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A specific case of semantic change is reappropriation, a cultural process by which a group reclaims words or artifacts that were previously used in a way disparaging of that group, for example like with the word queer. Other related processes include pejoration and amelioration.
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Etymologically, kåt is an example of pejoration, as the Icelandic cognate kátur simply means "glad". ;Sätta på :Vulgar phrasal verb with stress on the verbal particle, meaning "to bang, screw" in transitive use (usually said of males). The phrase can also be used in the non-vulgar sense "to turn on (a device)", a source of sexual innuendos.
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An etymological fallacy becomes possible when a word has changed its meaning over time. Such changes can include a shift in scope (narrowing or widening of meanings) or of connotation (amelioration or pejoration). In some cases, meanings can also shift completely, so that the etymological meaning has no evident connection to the current meaning. Ancient Greeks believed that there was a "true meaning" of a word, distinct from a common use.
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The process of pejoration leads to words that were once considered euphemisms to now be considered dysphemisms. In American culture, words like "colored" were once considered euphemisms, but have since been replaced by terms like "black" and "African-American". Sometimes slight modifications of dysphemisms can make them acceptable: while "colored people" is considered dysphemistic, "people of color" does not carry the same connotations. The words "idiot" and "moron" were once polite terms to refer to people with mental disabilities, but they are now rarely used without dysphemism.
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Redskin is a slang term for Native Americans in the United States and First Nations in Canada. The term "redskin" underwent pejoration through the 19th to early 20th centuries and in contemporary dictionaries of American English it is labeled "usually offensive", "disparaging", "insulting", or "taboo". The origin of the choice of "red" to describe Native Americans in English is debated. While related terms were used in anthropological literature as early as the 17th century, labels based on skin-color entered everyday speech around the middle of the 18th century.
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Goddard's alternative etymology is that the term emerged from the speech of Native Americans themselves, and that the origin and use of the term in the late 18th and early 19th century was benign when it first appeared "it came in the most respectful context and at the highest level. ... These are white people and Indians talking together, with the white people trying to ingratiate themselves". The word later underwent a process of pejoration, by which it gained a negative connotation. Goddard suggests that "redskin" emerged from French translations of Native American speech in Illinois and Missouri territories in the 18th century.
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The Zhuang people (an ethnic minority primarily living in Guangxi) are currently written with the character for zhuang 壮 "strong; robust", but Zhuang was initially transcribed with the character for tong 獞 "a dog name", and then with tong 僮 ("human" radical) "child; boy servant". The late American sinologist and lexicographer John DeFrancis described how the People's Republic of China removed the graphic pejoration. > Sometimes the use of one radical or another can have a special significance, > as in the case of removing an ethnic slur from the name of the Zhuang > minority in southwest China, which used to be written with the dog radical > but after 1949 was first written with the human radical and was later > changed to a completely different character with the respectable meaning > "sturdy": This 1949 change to Zhuang 僮 was made after the Chinese civil war, and the change to Zhuang 壮 was made during the 1965 standardization of simplified Chinese characters. The Yi people or Lolo, whose current Chinese exonym is yi 彝 "sacrificial wine vessel; Yi peoples", used to be condescendingly called the Luoluo 猓猓, giving a new luo reading to ("dog" radical and guo 果 phonetic) guo 猓 "proboscis monkey".
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