billytea,

I just finished both seasons of Parks and Rec and I took to it very slowly. "Community" is more my kind of humor than P&R - though P&R is funny.

P&R is closer to "The Office" (so if you like "The Office", you will probably love P&R) in format and sense of humor, but P&R has fewer people there that you HATE. Nearly everyone character on P&R, I have some affection for.

"Community" just gets me because of the layers of references and pop culture folded in. Many more visual gags, and ambition than P&R and so that's what hits my funny bone the most.

Beau laughs at P&R more than Community and truth be told, I think Community is a bit more uneven than P&R - but I still like Community more.

Community is darker in tone overall than P&R - in case that makes a difference.

The etymology of niggardly is concrete. The same cannot be said for gyp, by a long shot.

I still get a little uncomfortable when people intentionally use "niggardly" to be dickish. There are other words in the English language that are synonyms, I don't think it is a problem to use them.

The same cannot be said for gyp, by a long shot.

I was wondering if there was an etymology of "gyp" that wasn't painfully racist. Do all lexicons have the "you misunderstand" etymology that Hec cited, or just that one dictionary that he cited?

This sounds like a job for erinaceous.

(Also, I am trying SO HARD to stop using "crazy," and I fail so badly. But I keep trying. Gah.)

*blink* When did we decide to stop using "crazy"? And in what context? The word is used in so many different ways in modern vernacular, everything from "that was crazy awesome!" to "dancing it up like crazy" (which I literally heard on the Today show as I was writing this).

Do all lexicons have the "you misunderstand" etymology that Hec cited, or just that one dictionary that he cited?

No, they don't. Some still (like wordnik, for instance) still cite gypsy.

*blink* When did we decide to stop using "crazy"? And in what context? The word is used in so many different ways in modern vernacular, everything from "that was crazy awesome!" to "dancing it up like crazy" (which I literally heard on the Today show as I was writing this).

There are a lot of places elseweb -- disability communities, for example -- that have moved away from "crazy" as a modifier because it's not exactly a good reflection on mental illness. "Crazy" as a pejorative obviously doesn't cast mentally ill individuals in a good light, and "crazy awesome" -- well, I feel like that's the junior-high justification for using "gay" to mean "pathetic," or whatever.

...you do know about "lame," right? t edit I ask that because I almost said "the junior-high justification for using 'gay' to mean 'lame'," and, well, that's not cool.

Do all lexicons have the "you misunderstand" etymology that Hec cited, or just that one dictionary that he cited?

No, they don't. Some still (like wordnik, for instance) still cite gypsy.

I went and looked at Wordnik after I posted that, and I noticed that the etymology section says it's probably from "Gyspy." I'd like to read more about it, but I gots some work to do, dang it. I'll have to look stuff up tonight.

I am not asking to be a dick or button poke-y, but with language being a living, changing being, can there ever be a time when the common (and by common, I mean in general usage among a society) definition changes and therefore replaces (even if temporarily) the original etymology? For instance: the word gay. For 500 years it meant "happy, cheerful, etc". But then common usage changed the definition to mean "homosexual" and now, as far as I know, using it to mean "happy, cheerful, etc" (as well as the negative pejoratives) is not acceptable. Can't language, specifically words and their definitions and like the people using it from generation to generation change the meanings and ... intentions (?) behind the use?

Speaking only for myself, I use the word crazy. I use it to describe my mother when her meds are low and she's being a right pain in the ass and I use it when Emeline gets out of bed and her hair is standing straight up.

I think that using "gay" to mean "happy" is acceptable, but kind of weird. Like, probably no one will be offended by it, but you'll just sound old-fashioned.