The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #51259 Message #2878699
Posted By: MGM·Lion
03-Apr-10 - 09:25 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Over the Hills and Far Away / O'er the...
Subject: RE: Origins: Over the Hills and Far Away / O'er the...
Not sure I agree with you there, Marje. Theoretically you are right; but the 'gay' community's enthusiastic adoption of what used to be a recondite piece of prison slang because they preferred it to any of the then current alternatives {I am not saying I blame them: these tended to be offensive and they had every right to be offended by them} to the extent that they used it with a sort of defensive, proprietary,self-consciousness, meant that no-one else could use it in any of its primary senses without, in their own turn, a sort of self-consciousness verging on embarrassment; which has had, it seems to me, the effect of driving a useful & agreeable word out of currency. It's not a matter of thinking the word 'tainted' so much as the impossibility of using it without an atmospheric overtone immediately apparent to both speaker & listener which robs it of its communicative effectiveness.