verbicide ver·bi·cide
[vur-buh-sahyd] noun
1. the willful distortion or depreciation of the original meaning of a word.
2. a person who willfully distorts the meaning of a word.
I thought of several instances of verbicide, but most were curse words or otherwise obscene. (I like to make the comments for these words funny, not offensive - this entry is a little more serious, though) The only other two that came to mind were involving homosexuality; the word "gay" has changed its meaning by the gay community and "queer", once a term for "odd", then became a pejorative for gays, has now been embraced by many in the gay community.
I decided to see if I could find other examples and found this other
definition of verbicide:
Facetious. misuse or overuse of a word or any use of a word which is damaging to it.
Words - at least those that AREN'T swearing - are much easier to think of for this definition and the first one that popped into my head was
racist; it's been thrown around so much for quite some time and particularly since President Obama was elected that it's lost it's meaning...and that's sad, because simply disagreeing with certain policies and actions of this administration are not racist in nature and it takes away from identifying actual racism. That's as absurd as accusing a black person of racism just because they didn't agree with Bush's economic policies.
I've disagreed with many things from each and every President since I've been voting as well as with many president's actions before I was even born. I take great offense at being labeled a racist simply because I have different political views than the person making the accusation. (I also wonder if the person making the claim is guilty of
projection)
It's one thing to call me a racist in a forum or on a message board, but it's another thing altogether to say it to my face. That would be a big, big mistake on your part. That would make me guilty of assault and battery, not racism.
