Thanks, RivkahChaya!!
I’ve never heard the term used casually. It’s always been in the same category as “Jewing someone down” to me, so it’s not a word I personally can hear and not immediately think of the Jewish connotation. Maybe it’s gone the way of the word “gay,” which is another word I can’t hear without immediately thinking of a homophobic context, but apparently some people do.
I think it’s quite obvious that there must be someone who didn’t know the implications. Partly because I didn’t know where gypped and welched came from, but more importantly because…
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the Vice President of the United States clearly didn’t.
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He has no past history of antisemitism, and it would not make sense in context for him to want to covey that sort of bigotry. in what he said. He’s not Donald Trump, who might know what it means and use it anyways.
People not knowing things you think would be really obvious is just something that happens. It’s why I always try to be polite when informing someone that something is a slur. That xkcd comic applies.
What about words like hysteria or barbarian?
Shy is short for loansharking according to the Sopranos.
Barbarians were not any particular ethnicity, just a term for non-Greeks (later Romans), whom they considered inferior. Hysteria is offensive to some people, and I know people I can’t use it around. Mostly I try to avoid it. If I hear it used to mean “hysterically funny,” I don’t worry too much, but if it’s used to mean “stupidly out-of-control,” you’re probably better off with a different word.
The idea in the book and movie is the characters do not care that they’re using an offensive term.
It is absolutely, positively impossible to seriously argue that Joseph Biden, an educated and intelligent man, does not know “Shylock” is an offensive term. Of course he does. It just slipped out; he used an offensive term. He was raised Catholic a very long time ago when people used words like that quite casually. My Grandmother kept referring to bargaining as “Jewing down” until we made her stop. She didn’t know any better. It does not make him an anti-Semite in any practical sense, but he said something mean and insulting and should have known better. He’s been prone to such gaffes; it doesn’t make him a bad man, he just lets his mouth go faster than his brain. Let’s accept that.