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.

I don't think using "gay" to mean "happy" is unacceptable. Just using it to mean "bad."

And I also have that question. People ("people") are OK with "hysterical," right? I mean, generally.

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

I went and looked it up in my OED with the little magnifying glass and everything.

The first cite is from 1750 and is the thing I listed - basically slang from Cambridge students for servants at University. But in that case it's used as a noun. Then the word comes around in the mid-19th century as American slang where we get the verb that's common now. I'm not sure if those are related, and the first could be derived from the Greek and the second a shortening of Gypsy. But even there they qualify it as "probably from Gypsy."

Sometimes linguistically you can track the evolution of word usage and see something like "he gypsied me out of my money" to becoming "he gypped me." But there doesn't seem to be that kind of cite trail here so it's murky.

Ok. That was the best example I could come up with.

Another might be the word "gal". I'm trying to find a citation for it, but I remember reading a book that said "gal" was a pejorative used toward black women, particularly in Jim Crow South. The primary etymology shows it just being slang for girl or woman, but for a time and in a particular place, it wasn't as innocuous.

My point being, shouldn't the intent of the person using the word override the etymology IF common usage shows that general intention is not to insult or offend?