Where Do These Words Come From

Why does society feel obliged to come up with new names to describe old things? Case in point: A friend was over and she was describing the colour of a room which she had seen. She said it was toupe. What the hell is taupe and how exactly do you spell it? I checked on the internet and found no definitive source. And exactly what colour is it? I asked four different people and got five different answers. Again I checked online and it appears that taupe is a light purple. So what is the matter with calling it light purple? Everyone would know instantly what was meant and the confusion would be eliminated. When I went to school so many, many years ago and our grade one teacher went through the colours with us, I distinctly remember that there was no taupe. There was also no magenta, chartruse, azure, teal or cyan. Somehow we got through life without these colours. And life was good. Also this computer is ticking me off because it keeps telling me that I am spelling colour wrong. Probably thinks that I’m an American. Anyway, I digress. I don’t know of a single man(unless he’s a sissy) who would have a clue as to what any if these new colours are. When my friend Trapper the redneck bought a new truck and I asked him the colour, he did not say it was a muted teal with a crimson texture, he said correctly that it was puke green with rust all over. Now these are descriptions that a man can visualize. So please, desist with the designer crap lingo and go back to words that mean something.

Society also comes up with new words or phrases in order to be politically correct. Political correctness is also another thing which I despise but that’s for another time. Take for example descriptions for blacks in North America. When I grew up in the sixties they were referred to as negros. In the area which I was raised there were no negros and I can remember on the odd occasion when I saw one, I would say to my mother, “there’s a negro” and she would quickly shush me up, as if the person didn’t know that they were black. Anyways they later started to refer to them as coloureds, then blacks, then Afro Americans and now I believe the correct term is People of Colour.
Also entering into the lexicon are the terms that have to be changed because we are scared of offending radical feminists. Thus chairman was changed to chairperson and now just chair. Fireman was changed to fire fighter, policeman to police officer, fisherman to fisher and predictably in another ten years to just fish. Then we will have to rename what lives in the ocean in order that we don’t offend the land based fish. Perhaps we could call them waterfish. Where does the stupidity end? I despise any kind of prejudice be it based on colour, sex, language or whatever. But creating new buzzwords every year in order to show enlightenment is moronic. Where do these words come from? My guess is from the eggheads at the liberal universities that dominate our country. They develop these words in order to differentiate themselves from the huddled masses-you and me-and these phrases are picked up upon by the media-who also want to be differentiated from the huddled masses. In time after being force fed ad nauseum by the media, the huddled masses begin to talk like the eggheads. This in turn starts the viscous cycle all over again and the eggheads are forced to invent new words. And life goes on.

Am I the last bastion of rational thought in the free world? I thought so.

Tagged as: colours, correctness, political

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