Having been told often enough not to say "wheelchair bound" I generally don't

[conuly]

But is this a "don't say it" sort of thing or a "don't say it, and politely ask others not to either" sort of thing?

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Comments

Re: Wheelchair Bound

[pauraque]

In linguistics this is called the "euphemism treadmill" — words for things that societal attitudes deem unpleasant have to be changed regularly because they become 'tainted' by association. The phenomenon is certainly well known, and I agree with cosmolinguist's explanation of what motivates it and why it's not a bad thing, so I won't repeat that.

In response to your idea that by coming up with new words we are coining the insults of tomorrow and ought not to do that, I can only say that I'm afraid people who wish to insult others are more than capable of creating as many colorful words to do so as they require.