Terminology Debate Quotes

I don't think of 'heretic' as a pejorative term - necessarily.

I don't use the word 'renaissance'. It's flawed because in Latin, it's tied to the rebirth of Christ... It's a word that's tied to a European concept.

So for everybody who allows themselves to be separated from me because I said 'African' instead of 'Nubian' or 'Black' or 'Kemet' or 'original' or 'Israelite,' don't be so foolish. I say 'African' because the continent of Africa is the land from which we all originate. It is the word that we are most familiar with right now.

In my dictionary, and everyone's dictionary in the 1970s, the word 'queer' did mean strange and unusual. There was no slur to it.

They say African Americans. I say black people. I've only been to Africa once. I've been in America all my life!

I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, natural selection.

I don't like the term 'voice-over.'

Two chicks. I mean, ladies... ah - women, girls, whatever the term is. I'll get it. I've got it marked down somewhere.

I suppose there is something appealing about a word that everyone uses with absolute confidence but on whose exact meaning no two people can agree. The word that I'm thinking of right now is genre, one of those French words, like crêpe, that no one can pronounce both correctly and without sounding pretentious.

We were talking about urban youth. And by urban I mean lives in a city not urban as in black like white people use it.

All your names I and my friend approve of or nearly all as to sense & expression, but I am frightened by their length & sound when compounded. As you will see I have taken deoxide and skaiode because they agree best with my natural standard East and West. I like Anode & Cathode better as to sound, but all to whom I have shewn them have supposed at first that by Anode I meant No way.

That is [Edward Said] proposal as to how the term should be used. It surely does not describe those who are called "intellectuals" in standard usage, as he would be the first to agree.

I think everybody has to kind of decide what the word 'jazz' means to them, and that's fine.

I think, for a while, there was a kind of debate about whether you could bring back Negro and reclaim it, and then it was black versus African American; now I have noticed in conversation that black people will use all three terms depending on context. I don't advocate one term.

I don't find the whole 'cougar' word that offensive.

Sports journalism is in the midst of an identity crisis so profound that we no longer know whether we're made up of one word or two.

I actually don't like this term, "classic." It's wrong, but we don't have a better word at the moment.

It's Fifty, not Fiddy.

Some people say 'flutist.' Others say 'flautist.' I just say 'flute player.' That's what I was.

You can see it on the Internet: There's an argument going on continually about, 'What is folk music?' And I don't really want to get involved in that. It's an endless argument, a 'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' kind of argument.

From a linguistic point of view, you can't really take much objection to the notion that a show is a show is a show.