At the same time, it took me an embarrassingly long time to make the connection between “gyp” and “gypsy.”
It is not a word I would use, and it is easy to see why some might take offence. It is not my place (or yours) to say what people might find offensive and there would seem to be reasonable alternatives (e.g. renege, backslide, etc.) independent of the opinion of some academics.
Oh, the rather lame joke that Welsh is gibberish/ incomprehensible, when in fact it is quite an ordinary language? The same tired joke that, repeated over and over as it is, has a real and deleterious effect on the language and the people who speak it?
In English, these jokes are absolutely punching down. You do you, but spend a little time with Welsh speakers and educate yourself and then see whether the tired old joke is worth it.
I have learned Welsh to fluency — it was tough, but more because of a lack of resources and the fact that all Welsh speakers have good English than any grammatical reasons.
Same here - I used it as a kid and had no idea. But that’s partly because I had never seen it in writing, and assumed it was spelled “jip” or something, which makes the connection even less obvious.
Same. I even resisted giving it up when I was younger and more ignorant. Then I heard a friend’s mother say “jew someone down” for “haggle,” which I had never encountered. I certainly don’t use these words now! (I knew “welch” as a kid and would have used that, too; it just never came up.)
Recently some friends were talking about the damage their trees took from the “spongy moths.” 
So, is the word “gypsy” supposedly not to be used in any circumstances?
Lymantria dispar dispar - Wikipedia
In July 2021, the Entomological Society of America announced it was delisting the common name gypsy moth as part of an effort to replace racist or otherwise offensive names. Gypsy is considered an offensive slur by some of the Romani community.[6] This led the Society to select a replacement name through a consultative process.[7] In January 2022, they proposed the name spongy moth , in reference to the spongy mass of the egg casing.[8] This new common name was formally adopted in March 2022.[1]
Whatever your feelings about it, the name officially changed. So the default behavior would be to accept that change once you’re aware of it, it’s not virtue signaling or something to do so. Whereas if you willfully refuse to conform to it, you’re making an individual stand for… something.
Yeah. I wrote to the ESA when they had their public comment period on Lymantria dispar, proposing “hairy red-spot caterpillar” as the new common name. That would put the emphasis on the larval form, which is what most people are concerned about and could use some help recognizing, rather than the adult form. The adult would then just be called “the moth of the hairy red-spot” if it needed to be referenced.
The ESA did not agree with me (which is fine. It’s fine.), deciding instead to go with the “spongy” term that describes—to the extent that it describes anything—the egg mass rather than the adult insect itself. There’s nothing spongy about the spongy moth.
Still, it’s important to have official designations that are widely recognized and used, and I agree with the ESA that it was time to retire the name “gypsy moth”, so I call it the “spongy moth” now like everybody else. (But the caterpillars are still hairy red-spots, so there.)
I completely agree with this, and especially the tired joke that Welsh is “missing vowels.” First, it’s dumb. It only makes sense if you apply a misunderstood concept of what a vowel is. And, second, it only makes sense if you are stubbornly unfamiliar with how orthography and languages work.
And the worst thing is that it’s so predictable. Make a certain kind of reference, and it’s almost guaranteed you will get this dumb, inaccurate joke about the Welsh language.
Is there a statue of limitations on this kind of thing? It did originate as an ethnic slur but it has long since stopped having any meaning. There are plenty of things said about the Welsh in England. But being untrustworthy is not one of the them. I know this as I’m half Welsh, lived in Wales until I was 4, and have a very welsh name, but spent the rest of my childhood in England. As the primary accusation against the Welsh was beastiality (also living in a street called Shepherds Mount didn’t help) I’d have happily taken untrustworthiness in wagers.
What about things like “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” which absolutely began as an ethnic slur, should that be considered offensive?
The reference was the Trojan Horse, right? At face value, it references a cunning military stratagem that famously worked. Did Virgil use it in context of stirring up hatred against Greeks as generally untrustworthy?
Yeah absolutely the subtext was to contrast the honorable Romans with the untrustworthy Greeks
I could see that as a strong candidate for being “reclaimed” by the Greeks. The Trojan horse ploy is famous for being clever.
It’s only “Greeks” in English. The Latin is Danaos, which isn’t the contemporary Latin word for Greek people (Graecos). I’d argue (as someone of Greek ancestry, though not Welsh ancestry) that this word was always specifically tied to a context that distinguished it from the contemporary people, in Rome or now.
Also, a proverbial phrase is a little different from an ordinary prosaic word. “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” is a little closer to “Taffy was a Welshman.”
IIRC, the line was Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, translated as “I fear the Greeks, even when bearing gifts”. I don’t know enough Latin to know how close that translation is, but the English seems to suggest Laocoön was referring to Agamemnon’s army; that is, not all Greeks, but that particular group then invading Troy.
Anecdote is not data, of course, but I’ve never hear “I fear the Greeks” used proverbially to refer specifically to people from Greece, but rather anyone proffering an unexpected gift, with suspect agenda.
I’m not sure I get your point here. When we say someone welched, we’re usually not talking about a Welsh person. But what’s offensive is that we are using the Welsh as the archetype for the behavior.
In “Greeks bearing gifts”, although I’m not sure it’s equally offensive, it’s certainly analogous in the sense that Greeks are being held up as the archetype for something.
Given the responses by some Welsh folk or people who know Welsh folk in this thread, that does not appear to be the case, your opinions and ethnicity not withstanding.
How is this different than “gypped,” where many/most people have no ethnic associations with the word, yet is considered offensive?
I don’t believe that this is true. There’s no cultural stereotype about Greeks being untrustworthy gift-bearers. It’s an allusion to a very specific story about the time the Trojans got fooled when they accepted a gift from the Greeks, who, up until that point, had been besieging their city nigh upon a decade.
So the reference isn’t to some negative characteristic of Greek people. It’s a reference to be wary of someone you’ve been at it with tooth and nail for a long time and who suddenly have seemed to become all nice.
It doesn’t seem the same though. “Welching/Welshing” is an activity that is disliked in society and named after an ethnicity. “Beware Greeks bearing gifts” is a reference to a specific event. It could certainly be said better, maybe something along the lines of, “Trojans should be wary of accepting gifts.” But the phrase not ascribing a general behavior to Greeks, at least not if you know what the saying means.
I would say it’s definitely a clumsy phrase though, I don’t think I’ve ever used it in sincerity.
Agreed. Saying “Greeks” is just shorthand reference to a specific event. The event is the archetype, and in any case what happened on that occasion is now famous for being a clever exploit in war, not for being “untrustworthy”.
The fact that Virgil may have tried to play it up into a negative stereotype that all Greeks are untrustworthy has been lost in the mists of time.