Renig?

“I always heard that word came from slavery..

Renig? For example, playing spades or hearts, if you don't put down a card or back away from an earlier promise, that you RENIG.

I heard John Kerry use the word last night in the debate, and my mouth fell open. "Dang boy, did you just use a RACIAL SLUR??"

I came to find out that as for the etymological origin, it comes ultimately from the Latin 'negare', a verb that means 'to deny' (the same root that gives us 'negative' and 'renegade').

So, nothing to do with slavery except in the overheated imagination of the south apparently.”

“Renege, I believe is the word that he used, TD.

Renege:

To fail to carry out a promise or commitment: reneged on the contract at the last minute.
Games. To fail to follow suit in cards when able and required by the rules to do so.

v. tr.
To renounce; disown.

n.
The act of reneging.”

“It's OK for libs to use it, not for conserves.”

“Lighten up, Greaseball! There was no slur there at all. renege is a perfectly acceptable term.”

“I heard that Treebeard. Maybe he did. Maybe my southern ears heard what I wanted to hear.

lol.. It threw me for a loop though. I was like, "No.. he didn't.. he didn't just say that.. "”

“So whats the term used for "one who reneges?"”

“well that would be a re#&%!$, of course.. ;)”

“Renegade?”

“You have to nege before you can renege, though.”

“hehe.. blocked out.”

“Ya, you ,.. you.. Neger!!”

“or is that Negger?”

“I was scolded for using the word "skirted" in a meeting a few years ago. As in, "they skirted the issue by not answering." To go around, etc.

I was told that was sexist. I was floored - how the heck is that sexist? I hear a lot of non-sexist people use it all the time. Anyone's input?”

“Maybe it's Niggar?”

“hehe.. just seeing what gets blocked, and what doesn't.”

“hMm.. let me look up skirted. brb.”

“skirt ( P ) Pronunciation Key (skûrt)
n.
The part of a garment, such as a dress or coat, that hangs freely from the waist down.
A garment hanging from the waist and worn by women and girls.
A part or attachment resembling the skirt of a garment, especially:
One of the leather flaps hanging from the side of a saddle.
The lower outer section of a rocket vehicle.
A flexible strip hanging from the base of an air-cushion vehicle.
A piece of fabric that extends over or beyond something to afford protection.
An outer edge; a border or margin: a base camp on the skirt of the mountain.
skirts The edge, as of a town; the outskirts.
Offensive Slang. A woman.

v. skirt·ed, skirt·ing, skirts
v. tr.
To lie along or form the edge of; border: the creek that skirts our property.
To pass around rather than across or through: changed their course to skirt the storm.
To pass close to; miss narrowly: The bullet skirted an artery.
To evade, as by circumlocution: skirted the controversial issue.

v. intr.
To lie along, move along, or be an edge or a border.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Middle English, from Old Norse skyrta, shirt. See sker-1 in Indo-European Roots.]”

“Offensive Slang. A woman.

Apparently the verb skirted is not offensive.. but if you had called the b*tch who accused you a SKIRT, then it would have been offensive.

;)”

“Yup, that's the word I'm talking about.”

“Nothing sexist about the term "skirting".”

“Thank you! It was actually a guy that complained, but my skirt boss backed him up. She didn't know her butt from a hole in the ground so it didn't surprize me that she didn't know the proper definition/use of that word either.”

“Hmmm.. well I see you "panting" over there..

lol.. I guess if skirting the issue is offensive, so is panting.”

“Treebeard - I remember from a few years ago, a firestorm of criticism and calls of racism from the NAACP and reported widely in the media, about some right of center speaker using the word in it's proper form. He was loudly denounced as a racist for using the word. The whole thing was just to stupid. That is why I made the statement I made.”

“Just messing with you, my friend! I love the variations I can make with your Halloween name! I could call you something different every day between now and the 31st!!!”

“javascript: rs("videoWin","http://news.yahoo.com/p/v?u=/reutersav/20041013/av_nm_nw/b942d1f9c0512a7651c4ea470e716a36&cid=1094&f=31042383",650,450);”

“So no one's tried the perfectly acceptable word:

niggardly
1.Grudging and petty in giving or spending.
2.Meanly small; scanty or meager: left the waiter a niggardly tip.”

“Your boss and her lap dog are ignorant of the English language.

Yes "Skirt" can be used as a derogatory term for a woman but the term used in the context that you described means to follow the edge of something in order to avoid ging into it. Such as to skirt the edge of a storm when sailing.”

“I've heard that word used BM, and grimace every time I hear it!

:)..”

“HPM's right. That's a no-brainer!”

“BM - don't you remember one of the school admins in DC got in a lot of hot water for using that word.”

“Are we going to harp on linguistics?”

“i find the term renege offensive. i don't care what the latin roots are you people know what the modern images it brings up or this thread wouldn't exist.
further proof is the original miss spelling by TD.

my step mother is african american.

you people should be ashamed.”

“Happily she isn't my boss anymore. She was/is so horrible she keeps getting pigeon-holed in jobs where she can't do much harm.”

“I think we need to keep our conversations spick and span.”

“Bear,

although that word may be "perfectly acceptable", with the extremely offensive nature of the "n-word", many people have taken to thinking that any word sounding even closely related to the "n-word" word is highly offensive...

It comes down to the fact that most people haven't heard the definition or use of that word, so it makes people take great offense.

It's like the African-American owned soul food bistro restaurant in my area which used the slogan "Is she is or is she ain't my baby" in one of their grand opening ads....They got so much overwhelmingly negative response to that ad (accusing the restaurant of being racially derogatory or using "Ebonics") that the owners actually had to print out a follow-up ad to explain that the line was from an old African American Jazz/Swing tune from the early 1900s.... It was an African American history lesson for most people in the area.”

“Yes, Bison. it was PC gone wild. here's another:

Washington, DC's black Mayor, Anthony Williams, gladly accepted the resignation of his white staff member, David Howard, because Mr. Howard uttered the word 'niggardly' in a private staff meeting.

Webster's Tenth Edition defines the word 'niggardly' to "grudgingly mean about spending or granting". The Barnhard Dictionary of Etymology traces the origins of 'niggardly' to the 1300's, and to the words 'nig' and 'ignon', meaning "miser" in Middle English. No where in any of these references is any mention of racial connotations associated with the word 'niggardly'.

In other words, it's a perfectly good and useful word. But there is the unfortunate coincidence that it starts with the same four letters as the word "#&%!$". The news media are so loathe to use the "N" word, that they've been substituting the phrase "racial slur", as in "...they mistook the word 'niggardly' for a racial slur..."

That happened in '99. he was reinstated after the people demanding his resignation were made to feel like ignorant #&%!$s for not understanding the term.

Note - I tried to edit that blurb. Came from adversity.net which appears to be quite......adversarial?”

“I was going to chink the walls in the cabin but decided to caulk them instead, to be more sensitive to others.”

“BTW, I agree with saco on this one.
(in that people should be ashamed of themselves!)
last edited: 10/14/04 9:31:58 AM”

“Limpy,
I don't find your comment funny, not because of your proper usage of the word "chink", but because of the underlying context due to the conversation within this thread.”

“"proof is the original miss spelling"

Is sacco infering that young women can't spell? That is really low.”

“Limpy - LOL.

There is certainly nothing wrong with using the word renege, SacO. In the business world people use the phrase "he reneged on the deal" quite often. And for the record, I'm white but work with many people of other heritages (and are friends with them too). I'm certainly not racist.”

“Ms Pinky,
I was just citing examples of common usage words which should now be verbotten because somebody will take offense, thats all.”

“I work with a fag hag. Is that offensive?”

“Limpy--
It's not the common usage that makes your statement offensive (it isn't in the common usage.)

It is the context of this thread, do you know what I mean?”

“Ms. Pinky, you were okay with "harp" and "spick and span?"”

“wow.. the count went up on this one quick.

Y'all be good.. I got to get to work here.”

“Personally, I think we need to stop going down this slippery slope....”

“Pink - what exactly are you offended by?????

I should have gone directly to the Straight Dope. "Niggard" predates the racial slur by a few centuries:

Dear Straight Dope:

I was recently involved in a discussion, a rather heated one at that, over the word niggardly. While I am familiar with the dictionary definition of the word, my premise was that it likely derives from the same source as the infamous N-word. I attributed no racist motives to the speaker, but I suspect that the origins of the word were not so benign. When did it enter the English language and from which other language? While I am no proponent of political correctness, I have tended to look on this word with the same disdain as I have for terms such as Indian giver, Jewing someone down, and welshing on a bet. Am I being overly sensitive? --fargin@prodigy.net

SDSTAFF Ian replies:

You might look in a better fargin' dictionary. Sure, the origin of "niggard" is unclear, but not its timeline, which predates the N-word in the English language by a couple hundred years at least. "Niggard" comes up as early as Chaucer, late 14th century. The most commonly speculated origin is Scandanavian nig/Old Norse hnoggr, meaning miserly. Don't know how much faith you want to put in Indo-European roots, but one meaning of the root ken- is conjectured to relate a family of words with a connotation implying closing, tightening, or pinching (the family of related words is hypothesized to include such n-words as nap, nibble, nod, nosh, neap, nip). The racial slur "#&%!$," on the other hand, doesn't enter the lexicon until the 1500's, first as "neger" or "neeger," obviously from the same root as the French negre and Spanish negro, words for the color black, which are derived from the Latin niger.

Likely, your conversation on the word occurred about the same time as much of the country's, when poor David Howard made the national news for use of this term. Howard, head of the Office of Public Advocate for D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, who described his own administration of a particular fund as "niggardly" in the presence of two of his staff members. He has since been quoted as saying he "immediately apologized" for making what might be misinterpreted as a "racist remark," but the damage had been done. Rumors circulated that he had in fact used a racial epithet (one attribution claimed he said, "I'm tired of all these #&%!$s calling me with their problems"), and he eventually resigned. Eventually the mayor, after determining the facts, asked him to rescind his resignation, and he rejoined the administration, albeit in another position. The D.C. mayor's web page lists him as the mayor's scheduler.

The moral of the story is, this is what happens when people insist on relying on folk etymology and speculation. Howard was pressured to resign by people who, as columnist Tony Snow put it, "actually demanded that he apologize for their ignorance." There are hundreds of words in English, or any language, that sound similar--or even identical--to others, but have completely unrelated origins and definition. Sure, you don't want to offend anyone deliberately, but there's a fine line between not being a jerk and examining every word you speak for nuances that might be misinterpreted by people who don't understand them. If there's one thing the Straight Dope has taught me, political correctness should always take a back seat to actual correctness.”

“I'll harp all over linguistics if it might affect my employment.

Personally I find it irritating that people get castigated and sometimes blackballed by the ignorant for using perfectly acceptable terms.

The word renege has nothing to do with ethnicity and never has. It literally means "go back".

It's not the fault of those who can speak at a collagiate level that so many have a weak vocabulary.

Let's ban homonyms next.”

“I was under the impression that sacco's post was not exactly serious. Correct me if i am wrong..”