A wingnut is a handy, stabilizing piece of hardware. So why is it a pejorative term for those of a certain political persuasion? Also, is there something wrong with the phrase committed suicide? Some say that the word commit is a painful reminder...
Karina in Jackson, Wyoming, wonders why a useful little hardware fastener became an insult. The political wingnut is a shortening of right-wing nut, with nut meaning someone thought to be out of their head or lacking common sense, the same idea as...
Davos Man n.— «Political scientist Samuel Huntington who coined the pejorative term “Davos Man” (referring to participants who he viewed as having a false sense of their international identity), famously dismissed the conference as a “watering hole...
old settler n.— «Opening tonight in Warner Robins is “The Old Settler,” a love story set in Harlem in the 1940s. “Old Settler” is said to be a pejorative term for an aging unmarried woman.» —“Midstate’s calendar offers variety of cultural...
boaty n.— «Perhaps unsurprisingly, he describes the nation’s welcome of “boat people” in the late 1970s as a positive development. “For a long time it was a pejorative term: ’You’re a boaty, right?'”» —“Those who’ve come across the sea” by Now Kim...
short coat n.— «The structure of medical training in the United States is such that after a book-heavy first two years of medical school, the third- and fourth-year medical students are given their half-length white coats (hence the pejorative term...