rnv (micro.blog)@richnewman My concern is that simply avoiding a word will not banish the thought of it or its reality. To believe so is to engage in magical thinking — the likes of which are lampooned in the movie Beetlejuice, where speaking a name summons the person. There is no banishment, only suppression, and if you drive a thing underground, you can’t be sure where or how or when it will erupt again. Except you can be sure it will.
(That said, I took a quick glance at the etymology of “master” and, even though the word’s provenance predates specifically race-based slavery by maybe four or five hundred years, the idea of domination and subjugation seems to be pretty well baked into its definition, so... yes: tainted and probematic. I guess this can be another reason why I can be glad I never got a Masters degree?) //@bruce @simonwoods @johnphilpin
Of course if you want to really go crazy on historical linguistics, I recently ran across an etymology for the word Lord which was totally not what I was expecting but which is historically fascinating.
