(October 8, 2012 at 11:39 am)Stimbo Wrote: Ad (BC not so much) gets nonsensical to the point of farce when talking about centuries rather than specific years. "The 20th century in the year of our lord" is utter gibberish; whereas "the 20th century of the common era" makes perfect sense.I fucking hate "year of our lord" seriously. I hate the people who pretend it is just cerimonial when it was clearly started by idiots who believed in the divine right of kings.
It is just like idiots who say "bless you". Ok, yea I get it it is just being polite. BUT DAMN IT it did start as a litteral superstitiion that your spirit was trying to escape your body. That is why I dont say it.
But I am a bit of a hypocrite on word and phrase uses. I do get down on gays geting bent out of shape over the use of the word gay like "that is so gay" for example.
Before the word gay was popular to slur homosexuals it merely ment "happy". So if words can change and they do I don't think gays should get bent out of shape if someone says "that is so gay".
Same with the word "retarded". No compassionate person thinks mentally handicap people should be slured. But if I say "that is retarded" I am not in the context of that sentence refuring to mental illness.
AND I am a hypocrite because my favorite NFL team has a name that when the word was first used was a slur against native Americans. But that was then and no Redskins fan views that nickname the same way. Anymore than gays using the word gay use it in the same context when the word became a slur.
I hope I didn't open up a can of worms here because pejoritives were not the subject mater of the thread.
Just that words have more than one meaning and context does matter.
