December 6, 2004

Busy year for the PC police . . .

by

The “word usage group” Global Language Monitor has issued its top 10 list of the most politically incorrect terms of the year. The winner, as a Reuters wire story reports, was the computer term “master/slave,” which “refers to primary and secondary hard disk drives.” Also on the list: “non-same sex marriage,” to refer to heterosexual marriage; “waitron” and “barista” to refer to waiters and waitresses; “progressive” instead of “liberal”; “incurious,” as the report explains, “rather than more impolite invectives for President Bush“; “insurgents” instead of “terrorists”; and “higher being” as a reference to God, “a term some people found too religious.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.

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