Unintentional Insults with Political "Baggage"

Ariel, frieze from Broadcasting House, London, 1932

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

                          

                             —“Ariel’s Song,” from The Tempest

Strange is a word that has undergone a sea-change since the time of its use in The Tempest. In Shakespeare’s time, the word meant unfamiliar, or foreign, and that is the meaning he must have intended in “Ariel’s Song.”

But today, “strange” is more likely to mean bizarre, outlandish, eccentric, or weird.  The unfortunate circumstance, that the earlier meanings were simply a neutral statement of fact, while the later meanings are positively insulting, is hardly accidental; it is simply a reflection of every nation’s historical xenophobia—dating to the time when anything foreign to any national group was considered by that group to be bizarre, and was to be eschewed.

Indeed, in the selection below, from his 1906 children’s poem addressed to “Foreign Children” (the poem’s title), Robert Louis Stevenson said, from the turn-of-the-twentieth-century English child’s self-centric point of view:

You have curious things to eat,  

I am fed on proper meat;  

You must dwell beyond the foam,  

But I am safe and live at home.

Even today, most of the synonyms for strange still have an unpleasant connotation of something or someone “different,” and “not like us.”

The antonym of strange is “native”—and that is another word that is often misinterpreted—by both those uttering it and those hearing it—as insulting. The word of course means only indigenous, but, uttered by an occupying Colonial power, “native” was often uttered in a tone that implied an exactly opposite meaning—unfamiliar, foreign, or bizarre. Strange, how indigenous people could be considered foreign!

There’s another word—unrelated to either strange or native—that is even more politically “loaded” than either of those two—the word “niggardly,” which is defined as insufficient, meager, inadequate, or stingy, and is derived from a Middle English word of Scandinavian origin that was used as far back as the fourteenth century. The word is politically “loaded” now, however, because of its pronunciation’s proximity to the supremely insulting “N-word”—to which its meaning bears no relationship whatsoever.

? ? ?

So what do we do with these words now? Can one use them if one intends their original or actual meanings? Or have they been so tainted by politics that they must be excised from our language altogether?

In Ms. Picky’s view, “strange” seems permanently to have become “bizarre,” and so one should be aware that that is usually the way it is understood. 


“Native,” on the other hand, perhaps because it has been so frequently used to describe countries’ indigenous plants and trees, seems no longer to carry with it any offensive nuance, and may have been rehabilitated—except perhaps if it is used in a particular environment by those who are in power—to refer to those who are not.

And “niggardly”? Ms. Picky thinks this is a word that should be avoided, except perhaps in academic papers or literature, where the context would indicate its meaning unambiguously. The spoken word is too easily misheard, misunderstood, and misinterpreted. Yes, one has an intellectual “right” to use it—but one also has an ethical and social obligation not to offend unnecessarily. If there is a possibility that some audience might be offended by misinterpreting it, better not to use the word at all. There is no such thing as a “spoken” footnote.

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Not-Quite-Right

Dear Ms. Picky:

I am somewhat confused when I hear someone exclaim dismissively, “I could care less!”? That sounds as if the speaker cares a lot. Am I crazy, or am I missing something?”

M.C.

Dear M.C.:

You are not crazy, and you are not missing anything. When people say, mindlessly (as they frequently do), “I could care less!,” what they actually mean is “I couldn’t care less.” They’re the ones who are crazy—for not realizing how silly they sound.

* * * *

Dear Ms. Picky:

I don’t really understand a lot about derivatives and other complicated financial terms, but there is one thing I’d like to understand: Are algorithm and logarithm different versions of the same word? Or do the two words have two different meanings?

L.P.

Dear L.P.:

An algorithm is a sequence of instructions, or a procedure, that is used for solving problems, sometimes mathematical or computer related, and sometimes not.

For example, when your cursor freezes, you refer to the little yellow sticky note on your desktop, where you have written:

1. Wait a minute and see if it resolves itself.

2. Restart computer.

3. Call fourteen-year-old nephew, Al, and ask him what to do.

Your series of responses would be considered an algorithm. An algorithm can be, but is not necessarily, a series of mathematical functions.

A logarithm, on the other hand, is strictly a mathematical term. You might not remember it from high school, and you don’t need to understand the definition, but, if you really want to hear it, here it is:

“A quantity representing the power to which a fixed number
 (the base) must be raised to produce a given number.”

If you don’t understand what that means, don’t worry about it; all you need to know is that an algorithm is a series of instructions that make up a process, but a logarithm is a mathematical term. Still having trouble remembering? Think of my fourteen-year-old nephew, “Al”: “Al” for the meaning that doesn’t have to be mathematical, and “Al” for algorithm.

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