For current political commentary, see the daily political notes.
These are some terms I avoid using, with explanations of why I reject them.
There is another similar list in gnu.org containing software-related terms that we should avoid using.
Age of Trump: Let's not magnify the cheater/bully/wrecker by designating this age as being about him.
baton round: "Baton" is French for "stick", something which could be used to hit people. In English, however, we normally encounter a baton only in the hands of an orchestra conductor or a runner in a relay race — rather innocent and harmless activities. A baton round can be a good thing when sung by a chorus.
Lately I've seen the term "baton round" used as an emotionally neutral substitute for "rubber-coated metal bullet". This is so you don't associate it with the grave and sometimes permanent injuries, including losing an eye, that it can cause.
Breakthrough [infection]: A "breakthrough" is a noteworthy sudden advance for someone. Covid-19 infections in vaccinated humans could be considered breakthroughs for the virus, and for some perverse humans such as Republicans. I prefer not to identify with their point of view, so I don't use that term.
Centrist [Democrats]: "Centrist" is the propaganda word that plutocratists use to pretend that the political center of the US is where they are. Let's refuse to propagate that falsehood. According to an opinion polls, an overwhelming majority of Americans support the main political positions of progressives Democrats. The proper term for the so-called "centrists" is "pluocratist."
Term used by plutocratist US politicians to pretend that the spectrum of US public opinion is centered around views like theirs. In fact, a vast majority agree with progressive policies such as climate defense, a national medical system, and fair elections.
Children: Humans up to age 12 or 13 are children. After that, they become adolescents or teenagers. Let's resist the practice of infantilizing teenagers, by not calling them "children".
Climate change: A way of referring to global heating but give the impression it has no systematic direction of change. This term was imposed by Dubya's officials to support denialism.
Custody: The word refers primarily to the legal relationship parents have to their children. To apply the same word to the relationship between prison guards and prisoners is a euphemistic veil for cruelty.
Defense: The word "defense" is used in the US as an adjective in place of "military" as a way of pretending that US military activity is entirely for defensive purposes. Since US offensive military activity is a big problem for the world, I don't want to support that pretense. So I generally say "military" rather than "defense". I use the word "defense" only to speak in narrower terms about an activity which in military terms is specifically defensive.
Detained: I am frequently detained on the street, in train stations, and in airports. The people that detain me typically ask, "Are you Richard Stallman?" Then they say they appreciate my work, though often they are misinformed about what the Free Software Movement really stands for.
Being thus detained is not a painful experience. When people call the GNU system "Linux" and think I advocate "open source", that disappoints me, but there is a positive side: it gives me a chance to educate them about those differences, and ask them to help GNU and free software.
By contrast, being taken away by thugs who might hold you prisoner for a short time or a long time is a pain in the neck, or worse. It can be stressful, harmful, and even dangerous.
To designate such occurrences with a passionless word such as "detained", which is used for events far less grave and perhaps even pleasant, is to deny the essence of what is happening. For those occurrences, I say "arrested" or "jailed", according to the specifics.
Dreamers: I support the DREAM Act, which would allow unauthorized childhood immigrants, those who have been in the US for many years, to remain and apply for citizenship. However, I do not call them "dreamers", because the term seems corny to me.
First daughter: This silly and pointless term promotes treating the president's family as a royal family. The founders of the US decided to address the president as "Mr President" precisely to avoid this danger.
First lady: This term elevates the president's family to a quasi-royal status. Why should being married to an official merit special adulation? Even if we admire the president and per spouse personally, there is no reason to give that spouse a title that puts per above other citizens purely based on per role.
The founders of the United States wisely decided not to do that for the president. We refer to per as "the president" and as "President name."
First nations: I don't use the term "First Nations" to refer to indigenous peoples of the Americas. It's not up to me to tell other people what they should say, but I state my reasons for others to consider.
I am aware of the North American history of colonialism, broken treaties, and forcing children into boarding schools. I do not intend any disrespect by using the term "indigenous peoples" for those groups of people. It is a generally accepted term, and I expect they agree that they are among the world's indigenous peoples.
The first problem with "First Nations" is that it presumes that the concept of "nation" was applicable to all peoples in the Americas ever since the humans first migrated there. The concept of "nation" is a bad fit for some places and times. The concept is European, and refers to a kind of self-conception that in the past was not found everywhere. (Not today either.)
Ancient Greeks thought of themselves as a nation (though they had never been politically united). Ancient Egypt seems to fit the concept of nationhood. But can we describe the Etruscans as a nation? Did they ever think of themselves in such a way?
Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia had empires that conquered and ruled various ethnic groups, some of the time. Does it make sense to call those ethnic groups "nations"?
In some places, where ethnic groups blend into neighboring ones and boundaries of states keep changing, it is hard to claim that any specific nations exist. In Europe in 1600, England was a nation; so were France, Spain, and Poland. But what nations existed in what we now call Germany and Italy? It is imponderable.
Turning to the Americas, the classic Maya's warring city-states resembled the earlier Greek warring city-states, and had a common mythology and writing, so maybe they were one nation. At the same period, Teotihuacan was the seat of an empire that subjugated various ethnic and political groups; later the Aztecs did likewise. I'm not sure how to apply the concept of "nations" there.
Elsewhere there were hunter-gatherer bands that intermarried with other nearby bands. They could be classified into ethnic groups, but were those "nations"?
The word "first" is also problematical. If we stretch the word "nation" enough to fit all the peoples of 6,000 years ago in the Americas, it would fit equally well for the peoples of the other continents. None of those putative nations was "first".
I think the term "first immigrants" might better fit the indigenous peoples of the Americas, since their ancestors made up the first wave of immigration to the American continents. Except that there may have been multiple waves of immigration, which clouds the question.
Another reason I decline to use "First Nations" is visible in the capital letters habitually used for the expression: it is the slogan of a PR campaign to which I have not decided to give blanket support.
So I generally call those peoples "indigenous peoples" (of the Americas).
First peoples: I don't use the term "First Peoples" to refer to indigenous peoples of the Americas, because there is no doubt that the first human peoples lives in Africa. Also because the habitual practice of capitalizing the expresion shows it is a PR campaign to which I have not decided to give blanket support. See "first nations", above.
Global south: It's a fact that most less-developed countries tend to be found to the south of most more-developed countries. However, there are exceptions, such as the comparatively wealthy Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina and South Africa far to the south, as well as tropical Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, and several oil states in the Middle East.
If we're concerned with important characteristics such as poverty, inequality and exploitation, and their political and moral implications, a country's latitude is beside the point. Rather than use this half-true irrelevancy to label the less-developed countries, I'd rather call them "poor", "less-developed", "exploited", or some other term describing what's significant about them.
Global warming: A way of referring to global heating but downplaying how drastic it will become. This term was imposed by Dubya's officials to support denialism.
Homophobia: I call it "antigayism"; see phobia
Honor killing: Patriarchal murder.
Inappropriate: The vaguest possible word for criticizing an action. It means "not suitable for the circumstances, according to my judgment". Nothing concrete or substantial.
Such vague criticism can never justify the conclusion that the person criticized has done wrong. After all, any act might be frowned upon by someone.
If you want to demand that someone be fired or prosecuted for some action, or punished or censured in any way, it behooves you to make an accusation that is concrete, not vague like "inappropriate". You must say what the alleged wrong was, so we can judge not only whether it really occurred, but also whether it was a serious wrong if it did occur. If you can't allege something more specific than "inappropriateness", we must presume it wasn't bad enough to take action about — except perhaps to compare our views about it.
Men now face being fired for vaguely sexual conversations that were not sexual harassment and that no one complained about. The accusation made against these actions is that they were "inappropriate", because there is no concrete criticism to make.
See also this example.
Teachers are now getting fired by repressive school board administrators for reading "inappropriate" books. The book seems to be made of humor that is somewhat "dirty" and very childish.
Islamophobia: I call it antimuslimism; see phobia
Latinx: I don't use the term "Latinx" because there is an old, natural English word already available: "Latin." That is gender-neutral and follows English linguistic conventions.
Using the convention I proposed for gender neutrality in Spanish, the word would be "latinis", but my proposal has not been adopted much yet.
Libertarians: The right-wing opponents of government programs that help non-rich people like to call themselves "Libertarians", but that name misrepresents their views. Human rights are only a secondary issue for them, so they do not deserve that name. I call them Antisocialists.
For true Libertarians, look to the ACLU.
Moderate: See "Centrist".
Native Americans: I don't use the term "Native Americans" to refer to indigenous people in the United States because that term has a prior meaning: people born in the United States. I am one of them.
I am aware of the North American history of colonialism, broken treaties, and forcing children into boarding schools. I do not intend any disrespect by using the term "indigenous peoples" for those groups of people. It is a generally accepted term, and I expect they agree that they are among the world's indigenous peoples.
Non-avian dinosaurs: Let's stick with the word "dinosaurs" as the name for that group of species.
Obamacare: I don't use this term because it disparages Obama's medical insurance law. While that system doesn't go far enough — the fundamental flaw being that it is based on private insurance companies — it was a substantial advance. I do not want disparage it. Rather, I advocate the further advance of adopting a single-payer universal system, also known as Medicare for All.
Oligarch: Russian billionaires are often called "oligarchs", but the term is misleading in the 2020s because most of them don't have much political influence nowadays.
Partner: This word means someone you are business with. To use it in regard to a love relationship is, in effect, to model your idea of love on the idea of business. I think it is misguided to model important areas of life in terms of mere business.
Passing: When I was younger, I passed several times each year. I was good at studying and scored well on exams.
I don't think that death is like an exam, and I don't believe people get graded on it. So I do not wish to assert that someone who died has "passed". That is a euphemism.
Our society habitually refuses to confront the fact of death. The term "passing" enables that refusal. It also encourages the belief that a person who dies goes somewhere else, or changes into another form, as distinguished from decaying.
Therefore, I have decided to avoid using any form of the word "pass" to refer to death.
This has nothing to do with my opinion of the deceased. Even when I admired someone as a hero, I will not say that perse has "passed".
…phobia: A phobia is a form of anxiety disorder. Prejudice against a demographic group is a form of bigotry. Those two are different in nature.
They are also different morally: bigotry is a reprehensible practice, but you can't blame someone for having a phobia.
This is why I use the term "antigayism" rather than "homophobia", "antimuslimism" rather than "islamophobia", and "antitransism" rather than "transphobia". These terms show that they refer to forms of bigotry.
I respect the right to be homosexual, or Muslim, or transgender, so I disapprove of those forms of bigotry (as well as others).
Let's not refer to belligerent powers as "players". Game theory is pertinent to war, and to avoiding war, but we should never think of war as a game.
People of color: I don't use the term "people of color" because it treats "color" as a matter of essence, as if it were a substance a person is made of, rather than as the minor phenotypical detail it really is.
The distinctions we call "racial" are grab-bags of various details of appearance, which may correlate more or less with certain ancestral groups. They are real differences, but not inherently significant; they have no importance except to the extent that racism gives it to them. Let's avoid using essentialist language to refer to them.
Aside from that, it twists the English language, because a characteristic such as "color" is not something you can be "of". I don't like the idea of stretching my grammar that way.
If the idea is to refer to racial groups that face discrimination, I recommend "disprivileged racial groups". To include all groups that face bigotry, I recommend "disprivileged groups".
Pro-choice: A way to support the right to an abortion while failing to challenge condemnation of abortion. It also supposes that choosing to have a child cannot be wrong.
I support abortion rights, not "choice".
Pro-life: People who assert that fetuses are human beings, and that their lives are sacred but only until they are born, use the term "pro-life" to pass themselves off as supporters of human rights. Let's not promote their pretense.
Giving birth kills some women. In some cases this is predictable and the women get abortions to save their own lives. The US now has the highest rate of maternal death among wealthy countries, partly due to abortion-restricting policies that force some women to give birth. So we could call the supporters of those policies "pro-death".
Rendition: I've often enjoyed listening to renditions of music, in concerts and recordings. Not all renditions are good, however. Sometimes I have the impression of hearing notes that are out of tune.
Snooty connoisseurs sometimes say that listening to a bad musical rendition is torture, but they exaggerate. The worst rendition is nowhere near as painful as being kidnaped and handed over to a country that will truly torture you. Calling that practice "rendition" is propaganda designed to disconnect our feelings from those crimes.
Let's save the word "rendition" for artistic performances, and reject its use in regard to the treatment of prisoners.
Sex trafficking: This term is gravely ambiguous. It usually means trafficking people for sex (enslavement of people as prostitutes), but I've seen it apparently used to mean trafficking in sex (all prostitution, including voluntary prostitution). Such an ambiguous term is an invitation to bad thinking.
Sexual assault: The term is applied to a broad range of actions, from rape on one end, to the least physical contact on the other, as well as everything in between. It acts as propaganda for treating them all the same.
The term is further stretched to include sexual harassment, which is not a specific act, but rather a pattern of acts that amounts to a form of gender bias. Gender bias is rightly prohibited in certain situations for the sake of equal opportunity, but that is a different issue.
I don't think that rape should be treated the same as a momentary touch. People we accuse have a right to those distinctions, so I am careful not to use the term "sexual assault" to categorize the actions of any person on any specific occasion.
they: I avoid use of "they" and "them" for singular antecedents. Violating the English grammatical rule of agreement of number feels wrong and jarring to me. In addition, the failure to distinguish number makes some sentences hard or even impossible to interpret properly.
I respect nonbinary gender identity, as well as situations where someone's gender is not specified, by means of the genderless singular third-person pronouns: "perse", "per" and "pers".
STEM: I think it is fun to learn math, science, and technology, and good to teach them—to students that want to learn them.
I think it is sad when someone feels compelled to study those fields.
In any case, I won't call them by the chic buzzword "STEM". We already have perfectly fine names for those fields.
Water protectors: I support the movement that tries to block construction of new pipelines for fossil fuels, but calling the protesters "water protectors" focuses attention on the local danger of the pipeline (spills might contaminate water supplies) rather than the global danger of global heating, that threatens the survival of civilization.
Let's call them "climate protectors".
Worth: A person's assets will be worth some sum of money, but let's avoid saying that the person is "worth" that much. There are many other ways we could evaluate a person's worth. For instance, we could judge by per wisdom and per courage. We could judge by what perse has contributed to the world.
The last thing I would try to judge a person's worth by is how much money person has.
…OTUS: I find the usual "…OTUS" abbreviations abominable; I decline to smear the office of President of the United States by abbreviating it as "POTUS", however much I may despise any particular president.
I do use that ugly suffix in the term "SCROTUS", which refers to something even more ugly.