So random thought: there are a lot of terms, that are now just regular terms for groups or movements, that originally were insults against those groups or movements. e.g.:
What other good examples of this are there?
This doesn’t fit the letter of the OP, but I think captures the spirit: both the donkey and elephant mascots of the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively, started out as ways to ridicule them in political cartoons.
“Gay” originally meant “working as a prostitute” (and usually referred to a woman engaging in heterosexual activity).
Depending on the tone of voice, “queer” and “queen” can still be intended as insults, but many LGBTQs use them as common terms.
The term “Big Bang Theory” was originally coined by a writer trying to ridicule it.
The term “dude” used to refer to a foppish person but now it just means a guy. For that matter, a “guy” used to refer to a weird-looking person (akin to the effigies of Guy Fawkes burned on Nov 5).
There are many cases of insulting words being appropriated and “owned” by their target audience, even they may also still be used as insults by the insulters.
“Queer” was/is an insulting word for homosexuals. Some of them have now owned that.
Some Blacks have owned the word “N…” among themselves.
Hillary Clinton described certain Republicans as “a basket of deplorables”. Many Republicans (quite likely the very ones Clinton had in mind) began to call themselves “deplorables”.
“Novel,” a word for book-length prose fiction, was not meant as a compliment when initially used by academics who preferred the established epic poem as a literary form. It literally means “new” and the implication was that the novel was a fad that would disappear in good time.
“Democracy” meant “mob rule” and when Plato coined the term “res publica” (“republic”), he didn’t mean it as an endorsement.
“Yankee” is rooted in derision. When the British coined the term, they meant “idiot.” To the world, it means Americans. To southerners, it means northerners. To northerners, it means New Englanders. In Vermont, it means someone who eats pie for breakfast. I swear I read that on some Straight Dope-related forum or column, but am unable to provide a cite.
Yankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on a pony,
Stuck a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni.
This has a long history: The British troops sang it to make fun of their stereotype of the American soldier as a Yankee simpleton who thought that he was stylish if he simply stuck a feather in his cap. Then the Americans added verses that mocked the British troops.
The term ‘sophisticated’ used to mean decadent, deceptive or contrived.
Gothic architecture was originally called something else (“French style” or the like) before Renaissance architecture critics called it Gothic as an insult, implying it was barbaric compared to classical (and neoclassical) architecture.
To a certain limited extent, it sort of still does. Witness all the Europeans who call casual wine-drinking and topless beaches “sophisticated,” while many Americans call those things “decadent.”
? Plato wrote in Greek, and the Greek word he used that is now generally translated as “Republic”, from the Latin res publica, was Πολιτεία (politeia).
Πολιτεία signifies the general situation or conditions for citizens of a city-state, or polis. As far as I know, the term was not considered to have any disparaging connotations in classical times, and neither did the concept of res publica “public affairs” when Cicero used it for his Latin translation of Plato’s work.
So yeah, gonna need a better cite for any claim that the word “republic” originated as any kind of insult.
I think Sir Fred Hoyle coined “big bang” as a term of derision. I think “black hole” was also used derisively at first.
I always thought the term “Canuck” (for a Canadian) was an insult, but over in Vancouver there’s an entire hockey team full of 'em.
Also, wasn’t calling a police officer a “cop” once considered derogatory?
mmm
Clarification of the OP I was really looking for words that have completely lost their insulting connotation, so things like yank or limey (or canuck I guess?) while they aren’t particularly insulting are still thought of mildly derogatory. Where as tory or impressionist aren’t, they are just the word that describes that group or movement (also gothic and big bang, good examples)
I guess punk was bad example as its considered a complement if anything about music, its definitely considered still derogatory to describe a person.
Being Canadian, I don’t recall ever meeting anyone who thought “Canuck” was supposed to be insulting. I have read this in a few places over the years, but it is just completely wrong, based on my experience.
Aside from the hockey team, we also had Captain Canuck.
And I’ve just now learned of the rather extensive history of “Johnny Canuck”, so this isn’t just a matter of people nowadays not knowing where the term originated. JC has been around since 1869!
Canuck is a normally neutral term that took on a derogatory context in one specific time and place–in New England, which had an influx of not very affluent (that’s why they emigrated) French-Canadian immigrants in the Twentieth Century. Native WASP’s looked down on them in the same way, and for many of the same reasons, that they looked down on the Irish. They called them Canucks and in context it was insulting.
The context has changed and I’m not aware of anyone, American or Canadian, who still thinks it’s insulting today. But then, I don’t live in New England.
I don’t know whether “Quakers” counts as a “Common Term,” but I had heard that it was originally an insult.
Looks like the Wikipedia entry (Quakers - Wikipedia) somewhat backs that up.
“In 1650, Fox was brought before the magistrates Gervase Bennet and Nathaniel Barton, on a charge of religious blasphemy. According to Fox’s autobiography, Bennet ‘was the first that called us Quakers, because I bade them tremble at the word of the Lord.’ It is thought that Fox was referring to Isaiah 66:2 or Ezra 9:4. Thus the name Quaker began as a way of ridiculing Fox’s admonition, but became widely accepted and used by some Quakers.”
Not an expert in physics, but I think Schrodiner’s cat was meant to mock or at least refute the prevailing school of thought.
Now it supports those views.
I’ve read that about Hoyle in a number of places, but Wikipedia says that “Hoyle explicitly denied this and said it was just a striking image meant to highlight the difference between the two models.” I don’t have access to either of the sources that are cited to support this, but in this article the writer concurs that “Hoyle told me that he meant not to disparage the theory, as many accounts have suggested, but merely to describe it.”