Not everything they teach you in college is true.
Posted by Ben Tue, 01 Aug 2006 08:13:22 GMT
Last semester I took an English persuasive writing class to fulfill my advanced writing general-ed requirement. A major focus of the class was learning how to understand an audience, to ensure that you don’t alienate them as you try to persuade them over to your point of view, or at least help them consider that you might have a point.
One of the things we talked about was Political correctness. Most of the time, I have little patience for the PC police that seem to be looking to take offense as often as possible, but I did see a point in trying to avoid needlessly giving offense when you are talking to an audience that would normally be hostile to your position.
As part of the PC section, my professor talked about her son who has autism. She mentioned that the she finds term handicapped very offensive, since it originates as a durrogatory word for beggars, often disabled, who have their “cap in hand.” She told us not to use such a degrading word.
So, months later, I’m reading through my news aggregator and stumble across today’s Volokh Conspiracy which points out that such an etymology has been used by PC folks to demonize the word, but that the history is not correct.
I still have a login to BYU, so I fired up the OED and found the etymology given there:
handicap, n.
A word of obscure history. Two examples of the n., and one of the verb, are known in 17th c.; its connexion with horse-racing appears in the 18th; its transferred general use, esp. in the verb, since 1850. It appears to have originated in the phrase ‘hand i’ cap’, or ‘hand in the cap’, with reference to the drawing mentioned in sense 1.
1. The name of a kind of sport having an element of chance in it, in which one person challenged some article belonging to another, for which he offered something of his own in exchange…
So the word originates in games, betting games, and later moved to other contests, such as a golf handicap, and was only lastly transfered to those with disabilities. That’s certainly not the history I was taught.
Gosh, I thought professors knew everything.
