This just seems to me like the context where “master” is being phased out. Whenever master means “primary,” it seems people are choosing to opt for that. Sure, maybe “master” isn’t super offensive, but “primary” or “main” has zero baggage, and people tend to prefer those words these days.
And, yes, I’ve definitely encountered people using the word niggardly as a way to get away with saying the n-word. Usually they’re trolling, hoping to get someone upset.
I think you are both wrong, unless you think the big room somehow controls the smaller rooms or has somehow mastered the skill of being a bedroom.
Adobe jumped on the “Master is Bad” bandwagon a year or so ago. “Master pages” in InDesign have been changed to “Parent Pages”
You cherry-picked two of my examples, and one of them (a dog’s owner being called its master) is not at all unusual.
Care to address master’s degree, Master locks, or mastering a skill?
mmm
just wonderin’ a bit…
but do politically correct universities now have to change the name of the degrees they give?
( you know…the one that comes after a BA and before a PhD ? )
I think mastering a skill or subject (as in a chess grandmaster or a master’s degree) is different enough from being a master of people that those usages aren’t in immediate danger of obsolescence.
Maybe in ten or twenty years people will care? Maybe not.
The fact that Harry Potter has a Potions Master [master means teacher in this sense, though universities these days tend to use titles like lecturer/reader/professor] does not have too much bearing on whether “master bedroom” is apropos. @Lamoral says it absolutely is the term to use, or at least it was in 2015–2020. On the other hand, the OP’s business associate claimed it was racist (it may be, but the association of bedrooms with George Floyd seems opaque).
My impression (based on, among other things, what people have said in this thread) is that the “master” of a master bedroom more likely refers to “master” vis a vis “servant” rather than “master” vis a vis “slave.”
For many people nowadays, the idea of having servants is at best old-fashioned and at worst morally distasteful (which is arguably reason enough to phase out the term “master bedroom”). But it doesn’t involve complete authority and it doesn’t typically involve any racial component.
Estate agents here in the UK just call it ‘Bedroom 1’ other bedrooms are numbered similarly, but the expectation is that bedroom 1 will be the largest bedroom or perhaps the one that is best in some other way
If I was a realtor, I would ask myself “how many of my clients think there is a person in their household designated the master of the house?” When Sears coined the phrase, the answer was “almost all”. Now?
“Master bedroom” does seem to smack of haute bourgeoisie, which is no more woke than the alternative. Maybe that is the selling point.
Reading through these replies, I am wondering if I’ve been interpreting “master bedroom” incorrectly all these years.
My response to the term is that the main bedroom is the “master” simply equals “main”. I never connected it to the notion that the master of the house gets this largest bedroom.
mmm
The title of ship’s master (referring to the navigator or commander) has largely been extinct for years, replaced by other terms, though not because it had unfortunate ethnic connotations.
Most would agree that “Master Race” does have racist implications, even if users are marching at a faster pace.
Reread Bear_Nenno’s post: “. . .main; principal”, hence master (or main) bedroom.
It’s not “cherry picking” to specifically inquire about some of your examples.
And I don’t find it common at all these days to hear someone speak of a dog’s “master.” Thats something I see only in old books.
Right, even setting aside the paradigms of master-slave and master-servant, we no longer see the “man of the house” as the “master” of everyone else living in the house. This might mainly be a spouse and children in the nuclear-family centered culture, but recall that larger households might also include a grandparent or an aunt or someone else. At one time society would require that person to recognize the higher status of a “master,” but we no longer view household dynamics through that lens.
There is no actual offense underlying the use of ‘master’ in this sense. It’s just another thing wrong with the idea, engendering sympathy for a phony offense.
If people want to call a Master Bedroom by some other name they are free to do so but if they are claiming the term is used because of a racist connotation they are doing the same thing as election deniers. And as usual the world is in no way a better place from banning words while actual offensive behavior is unchanged.
Master bedroom has never bothered me. But I don’t have any reason why the word “master” should directly bother me. It’s not something on my radar or in my world. But I understand why others may be sensitive to it, and when explained to me I try and adapt because it is not that big of a deal.
What bothers me directly is when someone makes a reference about something in my life that denigrates or lessens me. Usually it is not something done intentionally. For example, I have worked retail all my life and yet it is not uncommon for people to refer to retail or service jobs in a scoffing or belittling manner. People are not usually trying to say such workers are less than people in other jobs, but it comes across that way. It’s just that “working at McDonald’s” or similar terminology is still culturally used as a way to denigrate some individual without actually meaning to offend actual fast food workers. But it is a phrase you would of course not use to denigrate someone if you know one of the people in front of you really works in fast food. And when used it may well mean that the speaker subconsciously or consciously does think that the fast food worker is a lesser human being than say, the stock broker. We in retail constantly have subtle and not so subtle hints that people think we are people of less value than those in other jobs. So I’d prefer such terminology removed from common usage except by those truly meaning to offend. Then I know where I stand.
Words and phrases that relate to hierarchy are problematic to those who are at the lower end of the proposed hierarchy. It seems a decent thing to try and not unintentionally offend others and I cannot for the life if me understand why this is a problem for some folks.
If that were true, why was it not used back when slave masters actually existed in America and slept in those rooms? Southern plantations had a few hundred years of actual slave masters and owners sleeping in the primary bedroom. For several hundred years before then, throughout the entire history of the English language with millions and millions of primary bedrooms occupied and slept in by the “master of the house”, there is never any mention–until 1926–of the room being called a “master bedroom”? If it were “slave master’s bedroom”, why was it never called that during slavery in America? If it was “master of the house’s bedroom”, why was it never called that…ever until 1926?
A half century after the abolition of slavery, a couple of Yankee business men in the Yankee North create a catalog selling houses that invent the term “master bedroom”, and we’re to believe this had something to do with slavery or racism? That doesn’t make any sense. I think it simply means “primary bedroom”. That makes the most sense.
This is certainly an admirable position, and one that is difficult to disagree with.
However, I think it becomes an issue for some when the offended may appear to not be acting in good faith. Some seem to thrive on being offended, and only get their hackles up when instructed to do so.
mmm