I sell “medium” ones at market. Also smalls, large, extra-large, and if I’ve got them huge.
But I’m not the state of Wisconsin. Or even in the state of Wisconsin, though I think NY may have some similar scale
Hell, some places don’t even have a “small” drink anymore – it starts at medium. And then there’s Starbucks whose small is a “tall” (although there is a secret “short” that you can get.")
Anyhow, I somehow don’t imagine we’d be having this extended discussion if it a company marketing men’s condoms sent out a news release saying they were no longer going to label condoms as “average” or “normal” (which most don’t at this time, anyway.) I think most of the men would just nod their heads and say “yeah, that’s a good idea” or, more likely, just shrug and move on with their day, and the rest of us wouldn’t care, either.
Same argument can be made for average. It is a tricky situation to have a default assumption.
No, it can’t. See post #154.
Normal means something that average doesn’t, namely conforming to a standard.
The average height for a man in the US is 5’9". It’s NOT the normal height, because that would mean any man who isn’t 5’9" fails to conform to the standard height for men. It is normal for men to be shorter or taller than 5’9", but those men are not of average height. They are different words with different meanings.
Hey, I’ve got a favor to ask. Could you please cut it out with the ageism? It’s obnoxious and insulting. Also may of the right wing culture warriors are Gen-X (Tucker Carlson) or millennials (Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro).
The plural of “they” is “th’all.”
If we can talk about forbidden adjectives that have not yet been mentioned in this thread, what about “niggardly”?..It most definitely is NOT a refernce to race.
It also sounds almost exactly like the word that is such a reference, and it also isn’t any longer in anything remotely resembling common use.
Obsolete words are likely not to be recognized by modern people, and are therefore easily misunderstood. Why should that be surprising?
No, it certainly isn’t, either etymologically or semantically. However, there have been some notorious incidents where somebody mistook it for a term connected to the n-word racial slur.
And as a result, a fair number of assholes have taken to using “niggardly” in a provocative “I’m not touching yooooouu!” manner, hoping that they can lure somebody into mistakenly going off on them for racism, so they can smugly explain that the word’s not racist at all, actually.
That whole situation has discouraged most non-assholes from attempting to keep “niggardly” in their active vocabulary.
If it’s not in common use it’s likely because some DO think it’s race related.
I don’t ever remember it being in common use, to be honest. I knew the word probably from high school vocabulary, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard it outside the various brouhahas over its use. We’d use words like “cheap” or “stingy” or “miserly.” I don’t ever remember thinking it was race-related, but it is a word I really wouldn’t use myself because a) it doesn’t sound like a word I would use, even as an English major and b) it has the potential to distract or cause confusion.
According to Google Books ngram, usage peaked in 1808, and has been in steady decline since 1865.
No doubt, cancelled by woke SJW Civil War veterans.
In “Jane Eyre”, at one point Mr. Rochester mock accuses Jane of being niggardly because she won’t lend him some trivial amount of money. I always remember that because it is THE ONLY time I heard or read the word being simply used in its original meaning, as opposed to being the subject of debate over whether or not you should use it.
I figure a word I’ve come across in use a single time in nearly seventy years of voracious reading…well, I can do without it perfectly well for the rest of my life.
My mistake, that was for the noun form. The adjective has had better staying power, but has been in decline since ~1945.
It wasn’t in common use at any point in my life, and I’m 69.
When I check google ngram for “niggardly” – which would be the adjectival or adverbial form – I get a peak in the mid 1840s and a decline from then on, both in the English and American English corpora. In the British English corpus, I see two humps, one in the mid-1840s, then a drop and leveling off, a brief rise from 1920-1940, and then a steep drop off. At any rate, it’s been on a decline for a long time.
George RR Martin used it multiple times in Song of Ice and Fire. Based on what I know about him, it’s implausible that he’s unaware of the controversy around the word, and implausible that he’s using it to try to own the libs, and 100% plausible that he thinks it’s Noble and Mighty to try to rehabilitate the word, which is only a little assholish but a lot clueless IMO.
And i think that’s sad, because i liked the word, and used to use it.
And I’ve certainly seen others use it. (Yeah, it’s a word i used in writing, not speaking). I suppose I’ve read lots of older literature.
But i can’t say i miss it badly or anything, as there are plenty of other words, including ones i use when speaking. “Cheap” is probably my go-to.
My father had a story to tell. This must have happened in the mid-1940s or so.
He was a high school PE teacher in Harlem. He was one of only two white teachers there. One day, one of the teachers (I don’t know if it was the other white teacher) casually and carelessly used the word “niggardly” in class. One of the students went home and told the parents “The teacher called us a bunch of n*****s!” and damn near caused a race riot in the community.