@XanderHenderson you'd think it'd be easy enough for people to employ common sense

@DannyuNDos they feel distinct to me, with the Arabic Captain Hook's missing hand being more to the back of the throat. But people commonly joke around here that they're very similar.

@M.A.R. People in education get really sensitive about language, and for reasons that make no sense to me.

Etymology is not destiny.

If it were, the word "niggardly" would still be considered acceptable in American English.

Sure, I just decided to be racist right in the middle of this conversation. It's a huge change but they have to start somewhere

Inded.

She also told me that I should never, ever call my bedroom the "master bedroom", because it is a remnant of slavery.

And that one I know is wrong---the term master bedroom didn't even exist before the 1920s.

And the word "master" has many uses beyond just a plantation master.

That one is one of my pet peeves too.

"Master branch" does not bring Dicaprio from Django Unchained into mind.

Well, I said it and it will from now on

It just feels like someone looking for an excuse to be offended.

:/

@DannyuNDos They are close. [ʕ] is the sound you produce when you are hit on your back by a javelin.

@XanderHenderson nah it's probably more like one of these "micro-obsessions" we sometimes have. Like the kitchen has to look spotless no matter how impractical it is

@jlliagre in the gut, maybe. But in the back? I'd yell a variant of "ow"

@M.A.R. That may be, but it still feels like someone looking for an excuse to be offended.

@M.A.R. Let's find some volunteers for an experiment!

@jlliagre I feel like I'd pronounce the glottal stop right after the javelin.

@M.A.R. Are you sure it wasn't just exaggeration?

@XanderHenderson Since when are grandfathers racist by default? Tell that person he's a fool.

@Robusto The verb is "to grandfather (in)". Most of the internet seems to believe that this usage was born out of Jim Crow laws, e.g. "You have to take a test to prove that you can vote, but if your grandfather could vote, then you don't."

But I would really like to see the OED citations.

@XanderHenderson Etymonline says "Grandfather clause originally (1899) referred to exemptions from post-Reconstruction voting restrictions (literacy, property tax) in the U.S. South for men whose forebears had had the right to vote before 1867 (thus allowing poor and illiterate whites to continue to vote)."

So it had to do with whites, not blacks.

@Robusto Yes, this is exactly what I just said.