This is part of why I like douche as a negative word! No bad connotations.

ION, my friend called to tell me the gender of her future baby, and I had to tell her that her husband already scooped her on Facebook! This modern world.

This is part of why I like douche as a negative word! No bad connotations.

Ha! Not so much in some circles.

yep. I'm with brenda. I'll have to pay attention to keep that out of my usage though, particularly with non-US audiences. I already jokingly say "bloody" this and "bloody" that...and I also need to be careful about that too.

I'm going to cause an international incident if I go to the UK any time soon.

Well, I mean that the origin is already a bad thing. (I'm going to say invented by men, but that might not be true, but definitely designed to fuck with women's bodies in ways that are unnecessary.)

Maybe I mean that the bad connotations are pure.

You do know that spastic is currently a term that applies to CP, just not where you live, right?

Do you think I was being snarky?

Many, many words are currently offensive all over while being absolutely benign other places. "Bollocks" and "fanny" meant absolutely nothing to me when I started university in the UK. You can see where that's headed. I imagine when I was in elementary school in Hilo, HI, my cohort of second graders had no knowledge of what "spazz" was derived from.

I personally really resent the implications of the word "hysteria" so I don't use it. However, I am not offended by its use; I imagine a lot of people who use it don't know the origin. I was asking a real question about origins and usage, I wasn't being snarky. Like others, I want to be thoughtful about what I say. I don't go out of my way to offend. But I am also very aware that language changes very much over time.

(As a side note, the denotation-lover in me sometimes doesn't like that very much! I hate that people use "disinterest" incorrectly as a synonmym for "lack of appeal" that a subject might hold since it actually means unbiased, but it's been used so wrongly for so many years that the official dictionaries will probably just give in if they haven't already.)

Also, a Scot I know here called his neighbor a cunt to her face, thinking he was using a bad word, but not THAT bad.

The internet does not live in the US.

Do you think I was being snarky?

No, I thought you were being regional. You're in the US when you type, but once you hit post, you're talking to the whole world. It's your call if you don't mind being offensive to non Americans when you post--it's entirely your call.

But your phrasing implied there was a divide of time on the word, if you were drawing a hysterical parallel. I wanted to stress that it's no such thing. Tiger Woods just got called on it pretty recently. It's a divide of culture. Prioritise as you will.

The internet does not live in the US.

Did Al Gore consider this when he invented it?

But your phrasing implied there was a divide of time on the word, if you were drawing a hysterical parallel.

No, but I could see the clinical term of "spastic" being the origin of the "spazz" used by U.S. kids and the over decades of use, the U.S. kids would be completely unaware as to its origin. I don't think the average person has any awareness of the implications of "hysteria" just as the average person has none of "spazz".

And of course I can only speak for my region.

Twice yesterday at the airport, airline personnel pulled April Fool's jokes. One said, "Sorry, the flight's cancelled. April Fool's!" and then the attendant said, as we landed, "Welcome to Seattle!"

That's just plain mean!

erinaceous's column for tomorrow's Globe sort of speaks to this issue, although it's about other stuff: [link]