(Mods, move if this isn’t the right forum)
What is the relatively new phrase for shifting social norms, or changing what’s broadly considered acceptable? Similar to “moving the goalposts”, only that usually refers to arguments.
Is it (somebody’s) window? It’s something that moves in response, usually (I think), to some people going more extreme in one direction or another.
(and rats, I thought this was going to be a thread about the phenomenon of blacking on a word or phrase, which happens to me so often now it’s the standard rather than the exception.)
That’s what I thought it was supposed to be about too. For example, I was awake last night worrying my brain (for no reason at all) about the term for the measure of the property of materials that indicates how stiff they are under tension. Just wouldn’t come to me.
It’s Young’s modulus, of course, now that I’m awake and have search engines…
Overton window.
The other day, I couldn’t remember the word “irresponsible” for love or money. As in, there’s nothing inherently [___] about using mind-altering substances … and here I considered “immoral,” “untoward,” “not best practice,” and just about every other euphemism I could think of. I had forgotten that the word “irresponsible” exists in English.
I’m trying to think of a word like “victim” that unambiguously refers to a person who received the most damage and came worst off, but doesn’t imply one way or another whose fault it was. An expression like “John Brown, the victim of the latest police shooting incident…” without implying anything about which side was “in the right” in the case.
“Loser” ?
How about “drew the short straw”?
That’s it! Thank you.
I’ve actually found Chat GPT to be good for these tip-of-the-tongue words. I knew Overton Window right off, but just for fun I entered your question verbatim into ChatGPT and it spat this out:
The phrase you’re looking for is “shifting the Overton window.” The Overton window refers to the range of ideas that are considered acceptable in public discourse. The concept was named after Joseph P. Overton, a former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, who developed the idea in the 1990s. The idea is that political discourse and policies tend to fall within a certain range, or window, of what is considered acceptable, and that this window can shift over time as public opinion and norms change. The phrase “shifting the Overton window” is used to describe when this change occurs, as the acceptable range of ideas and policies is expanded or contracted.