Not necessarily. I’d never heard this word in my life before the DC controversy, and I’ve been said to have a pretty decent vocabulary. I wouldn’t really be surprised if the teacher only thought to teach the word, for whatever reasons, because of the DC incident. I actually agree about retiring the word; unless there’s a major regional difference, it is SUCH an uncommon word with so many perfectly good synonyms that it seems that after the DC thing there’s really no reason to use it other than to say “HA! If that offends you, you must be illiterate!” There’s nothing wrong with the word, but context has made it a word better not used. And there are plenty of decent alternatives.
I have to disagree with you, gobear. Unless you expect current and future generations to read only books written by their contemporaries, the “retirement” of any word promotes ignorance and discourages erudition in a world already suffering from too little imagination and too few tools of thought (which I believe words are in their essence).
I have just been re-reading Brave Men by Ernie Pyle, who was probably the preeminent American war correspondent during WWII. It was Pyle’s description of (or perhaps homage to) men in combat. In it he refers to dive bomber squadrons as being perhaps “the gayest men in the Army.” He was, of course, referring to the insouciant attitude of men who were able, however briefly, to find things to laugh about between moments or stark terror. I was only a baby when it was written, but I’d hate to think that anything written in my lifetime is so old that it should be disregarded by younger generations. Worse, I would hate to have youngsters ignorant of the word “gay” in its now sadly archaic connotation.
What we are as people is in our books. Many of those books antedate our own existence by centuries. To be educated is to be able to understand them, whether or not we use the same words in casual conversation today. For example, we may not call our burdens “fardels” as in Shakespeare’s day, but if some teacher uses that word, explaining its meaning, and an ignorant parent complains that it somehow sounds “dirty” the teacher should be supported and the ignorant parent educated. Just retiring the word is cowardly.
We seem to be losing that contact with who we are, or at least who we were, because there are school administrators who reprimand a teacher for teaching instead of backing the teacher up. Kudos to the teacher who expands the pupils’ minds, and shame on the administrator who buckles to political correctness.
CrazyCatLady, given this context, I think the teacher was wholly in the right: teaching a word, with all its connotations, is never a wrong thing. I’d have no problems, for that matter, with a teacher teaching the meaning and connotations and history of the word “nigger.”
I still think that use of this word in conversation is problematic, and that someone interested in communicating effectively should think twice before using it, and that the problems with using the word shouldn’t be dismissed blithely as ignorance.
Daniel
Whoopee! I used it in proper context three times last night - during and after a Humanists’ discussion group I participate in. Can anyone top that? Moreover, it was entirely appropriate in the contexts I used it, and upon reflection, it is a really fun word to say. Rolls off the tongue a lot nicer than “miserly” or “stingy.”
Actually, used it a couple more times over the dinner table. To sum up my kids’ responses, my middle child said, “That parent is the one who should have been disciplined.”
I strongly oppose the suggestion that we should allow our incredibly rich language be constrained by the ignorance of the lowest common denominator. How few words do you believe we need to use to effectively convey necessary messages? Is that the sole purpose of language? I hope not.
Oh yeah - my kids have long known both “good” and “bad” definitions for cock, faggot, queer, ass, etc. After all, “the ox and ass kept time pa-rumpa-pum-pum.” Gad, what horrors I am unleashing upon society thru my raising of such insensitive beasts!
(Apologies in advance to anyone who may now be cursed with that execrable song going thru their brains on endless loop!)
Quite a number of entirely innocent words have disappeared from the English language over time because of similarities with offensive words. This is nothing new. The word “coney”, a once-common word for a rabbit, all but disappeared because of its similarity to “cunny”, a variant of “cunt”. My impression, although I don’t live in the US, is that in that country the word “cock” (already mentioned in this thread) for the male of the common farmyard fowl has been largely replaced by “rooster”.
We may be in a transitional phase where the same thing is happening to “niggardly”. It’s doubtful if this process can be stopped, and not clear why we should attempt to stop it.
Now you guys have me thinking of the scene from Shakespeare’s Henry V, where an English lesson gets caught up in a problem of unfortunate cognates:
The point of this little dialogue is that the English words for “foot” and “dress” sound like the French words for “fuck” and “cunt.” The French princess, Katherine, says, " O Lord God! These words are bad, corrupt, gross, and rude and not for the use of ladies of honor; I wouldn’t say these words in front of the lords of France for all the world."
While I agree with many posters that we should expand students’ vocabularies and explain the definition of “niggard” and “niggardly” when they occur in a classroom context, I still think, based on years of experience and a knowledge of human nature, that giving the overly sensitive a casus belli unnecesarily is not wise, and that it isn’t just 4th graders who will say in the hearing of black people, “Boy, that Jesse Jackson sure is niggar[sub]dly[/sub].”
Surely it would be charitable not put a stumbling block in the path of racial harmony if we can avoid it?
If you re-read the story:
How do you discuss literary characters without using the words from the story the character appeared in? How do you discuss Mark Twain’s stories or Shakespeare without referencing the perceived “bad” words contained therein? Is the alternative a “dumbed down” version of the story that has been white-washed for the elementary crowd? Or do you introduce a variety of literature and try to teach to elementary school child how to read and interepret literature that’s more than 10 years old?
What’s the upshot on the teacher involved? I hope she, and her colleagues also, followed the lead of the teacher who got disciplined for failing the cheaters in her class.
And by golly, if anyone tries to stop it, we will punish them!
Don’t you find a certain level of cognitive dissonance in this position?
Doghouse, I’m not sure that anyone’s proposing trying to stop educating people about the etymology of “niggardly.” I do think people are saying that the etymology might not be the be-all and end-all of the discussion, and that language naturally evolves, and that one of the ways it evolves is that words that sound like naughty words often fall out of usage because of what they sound like, and that this process doesn’t inevitably lead to some sort of Orwellian double-plus-ungood Newspeak, or even to a general cheapening of the language.
And I don’t think anyone is calling for the teacher’s punishment: I think we can all agree that that’s totally ridiculous.
Daniel
You know how you avoid being wrongly offended by a word such as “niggardly”?
Education.
The more people who learn the proper meaning of the word, and the earlier they learn it, the less likely you’ll encounter someone who’ll take offense to it.
Just to be clear, I have no objection at all to the teacher explaining the word “niggardly”, what it means and where it comes from, whether or not they know or should know that some people consider it offensive.
Nor do I have any objection to anyone using the word “niggardly” in conversation, unless they know or should know that some people consider it offensive.
I do not think that the teacher should have been disciplined.
My point was simply that the decline of the word “niggardly” is part of a long tradition of words disappearing for apparently silly reasons, but there is probably nothing that can be done about this and it is not particularly regrettable. Niggardly will disappear from common use, as coney already has. Indeed, some of the posts above suggest that, in the US at any rate, it has substantially disappeared from current use already.
Y’know, I don’t think that’s entirely true. I absolutely know the etymology of the word, and it still grates on my ear.
And having done a quick google on the word, virtually all of the hits I’m getting are either stories about the controversy over the word or else clever “gotcha” pages designed to poke fun at people who are offended by it. It looks to me like the word carries a lot of baggage in our society, independent of its etymology.
Nonetheless, if you think you can remove that negative connotation, go for it. I’m not holding my breath: I don’t think that’s how language works, no matter how much prescriptive linguists wish it were.
Daniel
One more note:
You must’ve missed the interview on Hannity & Colmes the other night, then. The parent who got uptight about the word is demanding the teacher be fired.
SpaceVampire
Whether the word is uncommon, or whether there are plenty of decent alternatives, or whether the word is, by general consensus, deemed offensive doesn’t matter. The fact of the matter is that it is never right to skirt over facts and pretend that the uneducated are correct in their ill informed beliefs simply to protect their emotionally charged, preconcieved, erroneous, notions as to what Niggardly actually means.
That parent, when informed of the words actual meaning should have apologised and forgotten about it. Instead, he is still insisting that the teacher should be fired for saying it just because it sounds like a word that is offensive. This just goes to show that this particular parent is stubborn, stupid and wilfully ignorant. This parent is threatening this teacher’s livelihood because she is stubborn, stupid and wilfully ignorant. It is impossible to condone the propagation of ignorance by those who know better when people’s livelihoods are at stake if they inadvertently offend the muddled sensibilities of the stubborn, the stupid and the wilfully ignorant. If they want to ignore the facts and insist on being offended by something that isn’t offensive then fair enough, but they shouldn’t be allowed to drag others down into the mire with them. They should be laughed at. Plain and simple.
Finally, if Niggardly is deemed to be offensive because it sounds like nigger, why shouldn’t digger be deemed offensive for the same reason? Seriously.
Because “digger” starts with a “d” and does NOT sound like You Know What. I really wonder about white folks’ refusal to understand the depth of black folks’ hatred of That Word, and their insistence on using a word they they KNOW is going to infuriate black people. Regardless of the etymology, the word still sounds like a racial epithet. This thread reminds of other threads by white boys saying “Black people get to call each other nigger, so why can’t I? I wanna call black people niggers and not get in trouble, waahhh!”
Tell you what–everybody who is just itching to be able to say the N-word, repeat after me…
Niggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggernigger niggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggernigge niggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggernniggerniggerniggernigger
OK, is it out of your systems? Good. Now will you please get it into your heads that your mistaken insistence that “niggardly” is an acceptable word in today’s political environment only serves to widen the racial divisions in our society?
Please, let pedantry take a back seat to empathy.
Firstly, digger does sound like nigger. Every word that rhymes with it does. If you insist on being pedantic about it, just supplant the word ‘niggling’ for ‘digger’.
Secondly, you’re missing the point. This has nothing to do with pedantry. This is to do with the fact that an innocent teacher is probably going to get fired because some stubborn, wilfully ignorant parent would rather cry racism than admit a mistake. This is about real world consequences. This is political correctness gone completely and utterly insane.
When you can absolutely guarantee that no-one is going to be falsely tarred, feathered and decried as a racist for using the word niggardly, then you can talk about ‘empathy’.
Strangely, I can talk about both at the same time. I can on the one hand decry how this teacher is being treated, and on the other hand suggest that generally the word is problematic for use in conversation.
Huh? In what Bizarro universe is this word not offensive? Do you mean that scientists have determined that it’s not offensive? Do you mean that no one is offended by the word, that people who think they’re offended by it are mistaken? There’s not question about whether the word is offensive (i.e., it offends some people). The only question is about how we should deal with the fact that it’s offensive to some people.
Monty, when you say,
Are you talking to me? I recognize that the parent is way out of line. When I say everyone agrees on that, I mean everyone involved in this conversation. Sorry if I wasn’t clear on that point.
I can think of three different ways folks can be offended by this word:
- Out of the mistaken belief that the word derives from a racial epithet.
- Out of the belief that the speaker intends to yank their chain by using the word.
- Out of a phonetic similarity to a racial epithet that makes their skin crawl when they hear the word.
You can educate people out of #1, and if that’s why they’re offended, then they’re ignorant. You may be able to educate people out of #2 – but the thing is, people who believe #2 may be right. And #3 is a purely visceral reaction: expressing #3, or honoring someone’s expression of #3, is a matter of manners.
It seems like folks who are defending this word in all cases are focusing on objection #1, and ignoring objections 2 and 3. If you’re doing this, be aware that you’re whaling away on a straw man.
Daniel
No. Digger is really not comparable to niggardly. The meaning of “digger” is obvious; someone or something who digs. It also begins with a D. On the other hand, since “niggardly” has a negative connotation and is an adjective, If you didn’t know what it meant, it would be very easy to assume it meant “like a nigger.” I’m not saying anyone should be punished; I agree that parent is an idiot. And now that I know the context, I don’t think the teacher had any ulterior motive by explaining the word. But I am 100% in agreement with Gobear (as I usually am, actually) that the word has so much baggage attached to it and is so rarely used that I’d be suspicious of anyone’s usage of it, especially after these two incidents have brought out the legions of people going “NIGGARDLY NIGGARDLY NIGGARDLY! Oh, you’re offended? What are you, illiterate?” I can’t see any reason to use this word other than to rub it in people’s faces. Some might think that’s fighting ignorance, I think it’s just being a smug prick.