I mean in the Pit. One has to be so careful about racist undertones in words and I wondered about this one. The Philistines themselves of course are long gone (although I’m sure their bloodline survives in the Middle East) but Palestine is still very much with us and I wondered how a Palestinian might feel about the term which is after all a derogatory one. I see there’s some debate on the net over this although I can’t find any consensus on it. BTW I have no plans on using the insult myself at present so this is just idle curiosity on my part.
I once called someone a Neanderthal, but that was before I realized most of us are part Neanderthal! :smack:
My Near-East Archaeology side, based on happenings 2000+ years ago, lost interest the present day reared its ugly head. Anybody who bases his nativist definition on people who lived back then is fooling himself regarding who Grandma and Grandpa were fucking.
Footnotes:
I actually have a degree in this shit. Much like ourselves, our ancestors would sleep with whomever didn’t say no.
OR! Philistine was a physical culture. Don’t mean shit, genetically, who bought into it. Can’t be racist. However, as an artistic insult, we mostly know who it covers.
And, FTR, it doesn’t refer to any primitive, but to anybody half of the SDMB finds a worthwhile artist. For the rest of us, Thomas Kinkaid was a philistine. No insult to any resident of Philistia intended.
How about Luddite?
There’s no cultural continuity between Philistines and Palestinians. Anyone who took offence would be doing it recreationally, not seriously. It’d be like the Swedish objecting to the existence of the Goth music genre…
Certainly could be an insult if it was intended to be. Then again so could “Angel” and “Beautiful”.
Also, can’t call someone a cretin in case it might insult people from Crete. That’s not the etymology, but Intent Isn’t Magic. Also racist? Vandal, barbarian, and “filthy stinking moabite dog.”
Damn those Moabites.
The ironic thing is that the rather than being primitive, the Philistines were advanced for their time. They had better metals, better weapons, and better booze.
I once had a patient named Philistine.
Really.
And she had a son named Eunuch.
Really and truly.
So the family apparently read the Bible. Understanding it, though, seems to be a different story.
I have used it in jest on the board. From an historical novel, I believe by Cecilia Holland, for a dandy, smart alec person.
Or the Minnesota Vikings.
I went to college with a woman of Cretan descent. She didn’t object to our use of the word ‘cretin,’ but she insisted that we pronounce it correctly.
Is it pronounced “FIL-i-steen”?
I call some doozies for my job and am not allowed to laugh. The other day I called a Delores Head. Husband’s name is Dick. Apparently at no point in his life did he insist that people call him Rick.
Nor did she have grounds for objection. The word has nothing at all to do with the island of Crete. It’s actually from the word Christian and initially signified a ‘class of dwarfed and deformed idiots found in certain valleys of the Alps and elsewhere’ before acquiring its more general sense of fool. Here’s OED:
That surprised me too.
Name originating from Ned Ludd of Leicestershire, England – the alleged founder of the workers’ anti-mechanisation movement of roughly two centuries ago. Might upset present-day bearers of that surname, I suppose…
How would they know?
I was going to ask what they named the grandchildren, but I realized the question would be like the son - it never would come up.
Regards,
Shodan