That didn’t answer my question.
Who has claimed it does?
I just find the entire concept absurd.
I did some casual Googling and the consensus seems that real estate professionals feel the term “master” is problematic because it connotates “dominance”. Specifically regarding master-slave relationship, but I could also see it expanding to include any hierarchical living arrangement, such as the master of the house and his servants or paternal relationships.
Of course, changing the name doesn’t remove the fact that those relationships did (and to a certain extent do) exist. Whether you call it the “master suite”, “primary suite”, “overlord’s lair”, or “the big room” my wife and I occupy the largest bedroom and attached bath because we pay for the residence as well as all the bill. The children (as well as any visiting guests or domestic staff) are subject to our rules and (within certain laws) whether they occupy the place at all.
The point being that regardless of how “problematic” the term “master” has become, for all intents and purposes my wife and I are still the masters of the house. That’s what I find amusing.
The swastika is still a benign symbol across many cultures with diverse generally positive meanings. Not every culture is interested in abandoning a symbol (or word) with many uses just because one of those uses is bad.
I will admit that the first time I can recall seeing the word niggardly in print I immediately made a mental connection to another word that I came to understand later did not exist. But I still won’t use the word in a sentence, partly because it’s archaic and I’ve never heard it used in casual conversation, but mainly because there’s a good chance the subject of the conversation would shift to my choice of words and I would be forced to defend it. It’s not worth my effort in casual conversations and it certainl wouldn’t be worth the risk in a professional situation. I can just picture myself in an HR meeting arguing that we should provide employees with a higher than normal raise this year because niggardly would lead to higher turnover.
Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown. You’re right that it’s unfortunate. While I’ll continue to use the word master bedroom, if I were a realtor I’d probably use primary bedroom instead. I’m not looking to upset my clients.
I would say it’s not just better to do that (in the sense that banning words is somehow only slightly less good). It’
I have claimed it doesn’t. I am suggesting that sanitising language in this way is a method for people to feel like they are performing a moral achievement, whilst not actually doing anything useful and perhaps even the opposite.
Maybe this doesn’t apply to you, but when I attempt to communicate my goal is to be accurately understood by those I am communicating with. The worst outcome is if members of the audience think I meant something very different than I did.
I won’t use medical jargon when speaking to those who do not know those words, for example. If I know that a certain word or phrase will be heard as meaning or implying something other than my intended meaning and I persist in using it, then the blame for the miscommunication is not upon the “ignorance” of those in the audience but upon me.
Yes and? @TriPolar was claiming that it is impossible for a term to become hateful (“couldn’t possibly be”). That an obviously incorrect statement: symbols take on other meanings all the time. It is nice that swastikas are still benign symbols across many cultures. You’d still be ill-advised to wear a t-shirt with one on it in most of America, short of some particular rallies.
To re-emphasize however - no one here is claiming that “master bedroom” is a hateful/racist phrase, or that those who use it are being hateful or racist. There is no outrage at its use. Just a transition away from it it “primary” or “main” based on some distaste for heard connotations. The amusing bit to me is the outrage about others choosing to not use the word.
It’s funny how outrage is so often something the other people do.
Just as a semi-random observation and not as evidence of anything one way or the other: my wife is Japanese and uses the word “Oriental” as a generic term to refer to people of East Asian origin.
You are absolutely correct. However, I’ve pretty clearly become of the mind that - when possible - I’d just as soon avoid offending even stupid and overly sensitive people.
That is one very important concern. However, I think it is also of value to express oneself in an interesting manner, enjoying the full breadth of the language. Some part of that is accomplished by using less common words, puns, and the wordplay. If a listener doesn’t know a word - and can’t figure it out from context - why oughtn’t they ask, instead of becoming offended?
How do you know what medical jargon your audience will know? Could you use the best term, and ask if they understand what that means? How ignorant do you assume them to be?
I think it kinda sad when folk suggest that speakers ought to simplify their vocabularies. It always made me happy when my kids used interesting words appropriately, as it does now with my 7-year old granddaughter.
You can use whatever words you want. Why are you so afraid of disapproval from people you’ve continually told us are too stupid matter?
It’s interesting to me that “master bedroom” is cited to be from the 20s, climbed by Sears, but “masters bedchamber” always much much earlier. It seems like the word bedchamber was the word changed, rather then master.
1685: The college accounts for the year 1684-5 have an appended note:
This yeare all ye first Court was stripp’d, ye Sparrs wch in many places were very bad new lin’d, all ye upper Windows made new & regular, the great Gate alter’d, ye Gate-House & Regent-Walk new laid with Freestone, ye bow-window in ye Hall repair’d with Freestone & new glass there, ye Dialls new painted, ye Cripple betwixt ye library & ye Master’s Bedchamber made new; that vast Summer in ye Master’s study, on wch all ye Sparrs of that building lean (being rotted at both ends) supported by two great pieces of Timber, a Cupola new made &c. all wch make ye moneth accts swell to soe great a sum.
[Magnum Journale, vol. 6, f. 221]
The intrepid slave, after sustaining this dangerous raillery, entered his master’s bedchamber; removed his spear and shield; silently drew the fleetest horses from the stable;
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 3, by Edward Gibbon
That is interesting. By contrast, with understandable ethnocentrism China thinks of itself as the Middle Kingdom, not the orient. (I mean, e.g. people are aware of geography, but do you think of America as being way off in the West (even as it is a symbol of so-called Western culture) and populated by Westerners, or just a normal place, as opposed to those crazy places full of Europeans and Asians and Africans?) It’s all relative…
I said it was impossible for ‘Master Bedroom’ to actually be hateful from it’s real usage. That doesn’t apply to swastikas at all. I assume you recall why they became hateful symbols.
When I am the audience I appreciate it when speakers are less caught up in demonstrating their full lexicographic breadth and more concerned with communicating clearly. Plethoric palaver provides a paucity of pleasure. I am always ignorant of more than I am knowledgeable of and many I talk to have jargon and dialects they could employ, allusions they could make, that will make them smile perhaps, but fail to communicate much to me. This includes children by the way.
I make a best guess based on the words they are using. If I have any doubt I will use “opposite side” over “contralateral” and “same side” over “ipsilateral” because they work exactly as well. The best term is the one that delivers the desired meaning to the receiver(s), preferably efficiently.
Right now anyone who uses the word “niggling” is very aware that some number will find its sounding like an offensive word to be offensive. Use it anyway and your intent to offend is the message sent, not your noble defense of lexical diversity. The word may literally mean one thing but usage has a meaning beyond what the dictionary says.
@TriPolar ”master bedroom” is not at the point of “niggling” but could it get there in a decade, if the phrase goes broadly out of fashion? It is not impossible.
And the phrase is used in
Records and Briefs of the United States Supreme Court 1832, as well.
That usage is a woman referring to the “master bedroom” as the one she shares with the man who is also living there.
Mister bedrooms are good, though, for heat waves.
and don’t get me started on Mister Mister bedrooms.
We can, of course. As I noted above, many people even enjoy deliberately working such terms into conversations in the hope that it will be misunderstood by somebody else, whom the speaker can then gleefully “gotcha” by explaining that it’s not actually related, etymologically or semantically, to well-known racial slurs.
What we can’t do is control how other people feel or think about our choice to use the terms we use. Whining “but the word isn’t actually racist!” will not cancel out the poor impression people get of you if you come across as trying to troll people into mistakenly believing you’re using racist slurs. Or even if you just come across as being thoughtlessly indifferent to whether your choice of language can be easily mistaken for racist slurs.
Related is its use in a sort of I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you! way where one, say, may comment that his black boss is “niggardly” in his pay or something like that. It’s clearly used to evoke the N word, but skirting the line.
It’s not a word I would ever use because, unfortunately, it’s too damned close to one of the worst or the worst racial epithets in the English language. Plus who the hell talks like that? That’s not a word I’ve ever encountered in modern conversation.
I.e., language is constantly changing. Duly noted, although it’s not exactly news.
I.e., linguistic prescriptivists are constantly warning that the incessant evolution of language is somehow just about to land us in some kind of looming unspecified linguistic catastrophe. With the implication that language somehow won’t work properly anymore, or will even somehow cause its users to be destroyed, like a slowly boiled frog. Also not exactly news.
To soothe your fears about the possible obsolescence of the specific word “Master” as a proper noun in the context of family surnames or brand names, note that a lot of names have experienced such obsolescence over time, without irreparably breaking language in the process.
In English, for example, the surnames “Villain” and “Villan” and so forth used to be much more common than they now are, being derived from the (perfectly respectable) name of the social category “villein” or commoner. Now that the derived term “villain” is almost universally perceived in the negative sense of “evil person”, “destructive character” etc., it has fallen out of favor as a family name.
And I don’t think I have to explain, for example, the sudden unpopularity of the (originally) perfectly respectable (though never very widespread) German surname “Hitler”.
The key word I used there is “proscribed”, as in “forced”, not natural language evolution.