Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 07:32:29 -0500 From: Natalie Maynor Subject: Re: offending idioms > mockery of itself. And terms change from negative to positive (as in > "yankee") or shift focus (as in "honky"). Am I making sense here? Perhaps You were making sense until you gave "yankee" as an example of a term that has changed from negative to positive. ;-) Are we talking about terms that are subtly offensive because of etymology that isn't necessarily apparent, or are we including blatantly offensive terms? If the latter, nobody has mentioned "nigger rig" yet. --Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)