Incidentally,
Jimmy, in an earlier post, you gave as examples of Words Which Should Be
Shunned, “ 'retard' 'spastic' 'knacker' ” Retard and Spastic I can
understand, but I’m not quite sure where the offence lies in the term,
“knacker”. Am I no longer allowed to say, “I’m totally knackered,” when
exhausted by the tediousness of certain discussions? Unfair to superannuated horses who
glumly face being sent
to the knacker’s yard?
Or have I missed something?
I obviously have, or Jimmy wouldn’t have bracketed
“knacker” with the terms “spastic” and “retard”.
Robin
>>
Ouch!!!
A little mousing around, and I now at least see where
Jimmy is coming from on this one.
Apparently the noun “knacker” in Southern Irish slang
isn’t remotely similar to the participial adjective that I’m fairly accustomed
to using.
It’s not as far as I know current in England, for which
I’m tempted to say, thank the lord, as there are already more than enough
prejudicial terms in English colloquial speech used when referring to travellers
in general or the Romany people in particular, without adding this to the
lexicon.
After a short and in this case singularly unpleasant visit
to urbandictionary, I now see why Jimmy bracketed it with Spastic and
Retard. It would seem, in so far as I could stomach any of the virulently
nasty explanations in urbandictionary, a word singularly without any redeeming
qualities, and one which brings out the worst in those who chose to explain
it.
Robin