Huh. I’ve always thought of it as ‘someone very good at writing and tinkering with code’. After all, monkeys are quite clever and dextrous.
I have always heard that a dog robber is a senior officer’s adjutant.
Chancre mechanic for doctor.
Wood butcher is a carpenter.
Inside the industry the term flat-rater is used for a bad mechanic that cuts corners.
Snake oil salesman
Handmaiden (or handmaid)
Whore
Many policemen, firemen and postmen want to be called actors?
Seriously, though, I’m not sure what you were originally trying to say here but I want to know. Do you mean that policewomen want to be called police officers, firewomen firefighters, and postwomen postal workers? I.e. gender-neutral terms?
Over here in the UK, “hack” is just slang for journalist, often self-adopted, and doesn’t contain an implicit insult.
The cross-pollination of the internet may yet change this, and I did recently see a UK article about hacks = journalists being attacked in the comments section by a US journo.
Not a profession, but “Jewess” has always struck me as the zenith of un-PC.
How about “Digger” for an undertaker/funeral home owner?
“Negress” also. Although personally I think it sounds kind of sexy.
On a side note, “actor” was used in English for male and female performers several decades before “actress” came into usage, at least in print. “Actor” supplanted the word “player,” which I would like to see revived because it has a certain, uh, playfulness, but that would definitely be an uphill battle. It’s still used a lot in theater, but not much in TV or film (outside of established usages such as “The Player’s Directory”). “Thespian” was once considered a dignified synonym for “actor,” but now it conjures up the image of a pretentious ham (although the International Thespian Society might disagree).
Bobbies or Peelers for policemen.
Also “hash slinger” for short-order cooks.
Cops = Flatfoot.
Infantry soldiers were once called dogfaces.
US Marines—Gyrines. And that was offensive.
Surgeons? Called butchers.
There aren’t any EMTs or paramedics who like being called an ambulance driver. It’s pretty insulting, actually.
Appearently, the suffix -ess to indicate the female gender is strictly forbidden in contemporary society. I am frankly mildy puzzled by this. It’s as if it is considered the height of insult to be identified as female?
I have been known to refer to myself as a Jewess, but it requires an arched eyebrow at the very least.
I don’t really understand why ‘actress’ is unacceptable. Male and female acting professionals are not competing for roles/jobs with each other – unlike, perhaps, police officers or the like. ‘Actress’ is in some sense disjoint from ‘actor’. And it doesn’t have the negative connotations that other female-specified occupations might.
I’m not sure if this is what the op was getting at, but I was going to nominate “Teamster” as an archaic title - not many teamsters know how to drive a team anymore, I would guess.
Re: “Undertaker” - frowned upon in the US these days. Use “funeral director” instead (and mayeb even that one’s changed by now?)
An “aside” about the word Thespian: it sounds so much like lesbian that it’s been Har-de-har-har’ed to death by the media.
Here’s one my Dad brought home from WWII:
He once asked a British soldier, “Where ya headed, bloke?”
The reply: “None of yer business, but yer headed for the nearest 'ospital if yer call me “bloke” again!”
Has the term “Door-to-Door Salesman” been replaced?
Q
Yeah, by “telemarketer.”
:)
Understood, but not what I was getting at.
There still are door to door salesmen (vacuum cleaners, mostly, I guess), just wondered if they’re still called that?
Then think about the words we use in place of something which sounds worse?
“My Dad’s a chemist”, sounds better than “My Dad has a meth lab!”
Satire, y’all…
Quasi
Here it’s almost always pejorative and meaning somebody with little or no talent. It’s probably most often used for writers or others in the entertainment field, though it can conceivably precede anything: ‘hack director’, ‘hack musician’, ‘hack psychologist’.
In America ‘Negro’, once a perfectly acceptable term used by blacks themselves (United Negro College Fund, for example) and by white people as a polite term, is no longer used. On a scale where 1 is “polite terminology”, 5 is “archaic but not offensive”, and 10 is “socially rude pejorative”, Negro is probably around a 6- not quite pejorative but getting there. Ditto colored.
Slight hijack: What’s the accepted term for people of African ancestry who are born in the UK? Obviously it’s not African American- is it just black?
I think they’re hoping to get a better spot at the Academy Awards (I know they’re going through some shake ups – I wonder if they’ll ever announce Best Actress after Best Actor).
I’m all for calling every actor an actor, regardless of gender (and bristle a bit when I hear ‘comedienne’ instead of comedian). It’s not as if it’s an ‘actman’ or something. But good luck trying to change a thousand gossip mags’ style guides.