[R]eplacing an expression with negative connotations is like swatting away gnats, because those same connotations regularly coalesce on the new term as well. Crippled was changed to handicapped; after a while, this needed replacing, and thus came disabled; today terms such as differently abled attempt yet again to elude the negative associations some assign to physical disability. This is an old story, one that the cognitive scientist Steven Pinker calls a “euphemism treadmill.”
**********
Hedonic treadmill definition here.
**********
And can this be true? No way does UD have the grit to read the actual document.
Do [the Brandeis Language Police] really intend to stigmatize the singing or playing of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy”? Or to banish the expression rule of thumb because of an obscure and probably false folk etymology — namely, an antique British law that allowed men to beat their wife as long as the instrument used was no wider than a thumb?
July 5th, 2021 at 11:18AM
Yes, and it is possible to speak the new locutions in sarcastic-sounding ways all the same. Imagine a middle-school thespian rendering all those “honorable man” references in Marc Anthony’s funeral speech.