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Oops, I didn't realize that welch was a variant of Welsh.
I retract that suggestion: Mia culpa!
Actually, I like my "boomeranger" idea better anyway. It rolls off the tongue well and I have never heard the term used for someone that throws a boomerang. Thus, I find it grabs the ear as something unusual which gives the context a chance to supply the intended meaning.
This topic led me to think about other common terms and phrases that we use without thinking and which are culturally offensive or at least insensitive. The first one which came to mind is "beat down by the man". We often say this (jokingly) at work when we mean that we are so jaded by the bureaucracy of management that we don't expect any real progress or change. Now that I am thinking about it, this phrase seems like a reference to slavery. I will use "beat down by the system" from now on (until I can think of something better)!
Although use of "the Man" to mean, as the Historical Dictionary of American Slang puts it, "white people collectively regarded as oppressors of blacks" seems to have started with Black Americans, it didn't appear until the 1950s. So there's no historical connection to slavery or the slave-owning era, although Black radical politics of the 1960s—a period when "the Man" was used in seriousness and without much irony—it was no doubt understood that slavery was included in the inventory of oppression of the white overclass.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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