Yeah, I can’t remember the last time I got eskimoed.
My analogy was about the term gypsy, not about the term gyp. Either you completely misread my post and the post it replied to, or I don’t really get the joke here.
I would find out how individuals of that ethnicity felt about the terms first. Are there any groups that self-identify as philistines or barbarians currently?
Just to be clear, in relation to other derogatory nomenclature for travelling folk I don’t think gypo is particularly bad. I wouldn’t call an actual Gypsy or Traveller a gypo because I try not to be a prick. However there are terms such as knacker and pikey that are more loaded, more offensive in the same context. I wouldn’t use those terms either to referring to Travellers.
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PookahMacPhellimey** I could be wrong but I’m fairly sure some Irish travellers refer to themselves as Gypsies so it’s not quite the same as the term Eskimo.
I swear, this place needs a sticky regarding what ‘race’ means in English.
Merriam-Webster:
Definition 3
I’m pretty fed up of EVERY TIME race is mentioned some ignorant person coming in with “X is not a race”. Every bloody time.
You seem to be misunderstanding the question. As acknowledged in the Wikipedia article , the word ‘gypsy’ as commonly used in North America has absolutely bupkus to do with ethnicity, national origin, skin color, religion, or any other class of people. It’s anyone who travels from place to place and lives in a wagon, or camper, or other mobile dwelling.
That being said, it’s still offensive to imply that anyone who chooses to live that way is a thief or a swindler.
Just to clarify – you’ve never personally used either of those words because you’re still in some sort of research phase? That strikes me as unlikely.
No, I’ve never personally used these words because I have a bachelors in history and know sufficiently enough about the Philistine and the Barbarian (as it was applied originally as lable by the Romans) cultures to consider the common language usage of the terms inappropriate descriptions (basically incorrect prejudiced stereotypes) of some rather interesting ethnic groups. Currently, the only person I have ever used either term with is one of my neo-pagan, aging hippie colleagues who self-identifies sometimes as a Barbarian to demonstrate his non-Greco-Roman, non-Judeo-Christian life philosopies.
Okay, I give you Philistine, but can I have a cite supporting that Barbarian was used as an ethnic identifier, I think you are getting confused with Vandal/vandal
I don’t think it’s fair to call it derogatory when it’s used by someone who has no idea of its origins. Words are given meaning by the people who speak them, and if a guy has no idea that a word is even supposed to apply to a particular group of people than it’s not derogatory for him. Let’s take this situation to its logical extreme; consider some far future society that has completely forgotten the origin of the term and even the existence of any group called “gypsies”. If they use the word “gyp” to mean fraud and have no idea it ever applied to some ethnic group, are they being derogatory towards people they don’t even know ever existed?
At this point I don’t think so. If you asked the average American what they thought of upon hearing the word “Gypsy”, I think they’d answer with “an old lady putting a curse on someone”.
I think it’s important not to get into an imbroglio over what “derogatory” means.
I think most people should be able to agree:
(i) “Gyp” is etymologically derived from “Gypsy” in an obviously derogatory way
(ii) Romani or anyone else identified with “gypsy” (by their choice or by other people’s choice) may legitimately be hurt by it if they’ve heard it used often against them.
(iii) Most people may genuinely not know the etymology and would be shocked if they did.
Now, what I take away from that is “If you say ‘gyp’, there’s nothing wrong with you, but now you know, you should probably avoid it.” I remember an amusing anecdote from someone who was jewish, but had only ever heard the slur (that I’ve never heard) “Jew down” aloud, and didn’t realise it was the same word, and felt ridiculous when they found out.
But some people’s logic seems to go like this: “‘Gyp’ is derogatory. Only bad people say derogatory things. But I genuinely didn’t mean any slur. Therefore it’s not derogatory after all. Therefore anyone who is offended is stupid, and I shall go on saying it, however much it hurts some people to the bone because I have AWESOME LOGIC POWA and they are whiny emotional crybabies.” That’s entirely understandable – almost everyone (including me, including most politically correct liberal types) makes that mistake of thinking. But please don’t. No, you didn’t do anything wrong. Really. You might have accidentally hurt someone, but you had no reason to know[1]. Or maybe you knew vaguely, but hadn’t realised there was a good reason to stop. Really, THAT’S OK. Just don’t use it an excuse to be wilfully blind in the FUTURE, even if it involves everyone (potential offendee and potential offendor alike) putting in a small amount of effort to understand.
[1] Unlike, say, “N*****”, where anyone exposed to Western media really can’t plead ignorance that it’s offensive.
Ever since I found out that ‘gyp’ originated in a slur against Gypsies I have avoided using it, just as I wouldn’t use the term ‘jew’ as a verb. I think most people would avoid using it if they knew its origins, at least in America, since I don’t think most Americans have any negative views of Gypsies.
If you asked most people who use the term,I bet most of them think it’s spelled ‘jip’ and do not realize there is any connection to Gypsies, as one of the posters here commented he used to think.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to make the argument that it doesn’t matter in a perfect world. I should have been more clear that mattering isn’t the key thing with respect to how important it is to certain groups of people.
This is factually wrong at least twice over; certainly the Holocaust did not kill 19 out of 20 Roma (19 out of 20 Roma didn’t even live in Europe) and much of the Holocaust happened after U.S. entry into the war.
As to the word, it’s derogatory in origin and hurtful to Romani who hear it, so it should be avoided. You can’t blame someone if they didn’t know, as in fact most people don’t; frankly, I suspect most people in North America have absolutely no idea whatsoever who “Gypsies” are or even that they are a real ethnic group. If I met someone who was Romani I wouldn’t even know they were; how the hell can you even tell? I don’t even know what a Romani name sounds like.
In Japan, incredibly racist words and depictions of black people are sometimes to be found, but Japanese often simply don’t know how offensive those things seem to black people. So you can’t say they’re being deliberately mean. But if a Japanese DID know, and was informed of the fact that tarbaby images and words like “nigger” were offensive to black people, but kept using them, that person would be a big asshole.
Vandal is probably a much better example of what I was going for, but I was looking at this etymology:
Tramps and thieves, generally.
In reference to my OP, Carol Higgins Clark is a writer and words are her tools in trade. She certainly should know (or have learned) the origins of gyp before using it as a title.
I didn’t mention that all her titles start with a different letter. Since she has already used J in Jinxed, I wonder if her “K” title will be Kiked.:rolleyes:
I don’t know how commonly-known this is, but I gather it’s a reference to gypsies. As a kid, and until fairly recently, I didn’t know about that and so didn’t think of it as derogatory.
I think it was probably on this board that I learned the connection to gypsies. I’d always just heard the word spoken and thought it was “gipped.” It was never connected to a group of people in my mind.
I didn’t know for many years that “gyp” was connected with gypsies. Having know for quite some time that it is, but being one who wouldn’t know a gypsy if one were to bite me in the ass, I can’t say that I find it particularly offensive even now. It doesn’t happen to be part of my working vocabulary, though, as I prefer “screw,” “cheat,” or “rip off,” so my personal risk of offending anyone is quite low.