>> "Political correctness" was not invented in anglophone world - that's where it got a politically correct name. It's all about naming things, groups of people, ideas and anything that has a word to describe it, in such a manner that nobody would be offended. That won't do much good to those who were initially offended - because the wrongs done to them still remain unscathed - but it's the thought that counts. So here's a list of words which were once normal, but have now vanished and were replaced with PC expressions.
last refreshed 04/09/2010 11:45:26 AM
| Forbidden words | Politically correct | Note |
|---|---|---|
| ad | sponsored content | |
| astrophysics | rocket science | but there's a worse expression for "ain't that hard to understand": "it's not rocket surgery" |
| black | African American | |
| censored | edited for content | |
| crossroads | interchange | (nothing actually new here, except that I added the 's'; two crossed roads make one interchange, so roads is a singular...) |
| doll | action figure | so they could sell them to boys too, but they're still dolls. |
| employee | associate | According to dr. Kardelj's theory of self-managed socialism, even enterprise is not liberated enough; only freely associated labor can make it. So nobody's either employed nor required to do any work. They just need to keep company to each other, by way of association. |
| every day | on a daily basis | |
| factory | plant | Sounds green, doesn't it? It's still as dirty and poisonous as before, just sounds better. |
| fireman | firefighter | somehow this isn't "fireperson" |
| foreign | international | this goes so far that now there's "shipping to international addresses" and books "international languages" in the public library, or "Condé Nast counts international readers and ComScore and Neilsen/NetRatings do not". I wish they would find ONE international reader. |
| foreigner | foreign national | |
| health | wellness | somehow disease never got promoted into badness. |
| house | home | Nobody will try to sell you a house. They sell homes, no less. |
| I will ~ now | what I'm going to do now is I'll ~ | a more frequent form of the above |
| I would like to have the ~ | What I would like to do is have the ~ | not quite in the PC domain, but when was the last time you heard the short form? |
| ignorant | challenged | |
| invalid | person with disability | |
| jungle | rain forest | there's a Raintree Street in my 'hood. There must be whole forests of it out there. |
| neurology | brain science | |
| now | at this time | used in public announcements. "we don't have it at this time" probably means "none now, and we have no idea when will we have it". |
| underprivileged | poor | |
| retreat (military) | take evasive action | |
| rule (as in 'ruler') | governance | The masses will not feel oppressed if they don't see the ruler(s) as such, but rather as a governess. The difference is, actually, negligible. |
| second-hand | pre-owned | It's as if someone did you a favor by owning it for you for a while. Nobody ever died of pre-owned smoke. |
| soldiers | troops | note that "troop" is now pluralia tantum - haven't heard it in singular for years. |
| sportsman | athlete | |
| spying | antiterrorist surveillance | |
| stewardesse | flight attendant | |
| subtitles | closed captions | They are supposedly completely different - subtitles are text over a movie, while closed captions are text over a movie. But then, subtitles happen only in international... movies. |
| too expensive | cost-prohibitive | |
| underprivileged | poor | |
| undertaker's office | funeral home | and who lives in that home? ;) |
| usurious | sub-prime | |
| weak | sub-optimal | qv where I first found it |
| white | caucasian | it's actually official... although nominally speaking the Hispanics should be Caucasian by origin (with a bit of Maori), but somehow they are not... maybe the percentage of native blood? |
| worker | employee | this guy isn't supposed to do any work anyway, his first and foremost duty is to suffer the employment |
| worker | associate | doesn't really have to do any work at all, only needs to stay associated (with whom?) |
As an addendum to this list, here's the list, compiled by Alan Popow, about the PC expressions composed using "challenged".
Not dishonest, but Ethically challenged