On Using the word 'retarded'

Hear me out... If you disagree with me after reading my thought, send me an email.

The word retarded comes from the French word retarder, which means 'to delay'. It is a word in the English language, just like any other word, neither good nor bad.

Retarded can be used to express an idea I.e. 'our progress was retarded by unforeseen difficulties' (straight out of websters dictionary), or to hurt peoples feelings.

Mental retardation was originally picked as a kinder medical definition to replace terms like feeblemindedness, idiocy, and mental subnormality that had become pejorative.

Any words picked as a replacement will soon fall out of favour as unkind people will always find ways to hurt others verbally.

One of the latest versions of this is to call people snowflakes to denote a person with an inflated sense of uniqueness and an unwarranted sense of entitlement.

Should we stop using snowflake once it starts to hurt enough peoples feelings?

By the same token the word wheelchair is completely acceptable, but denying someone's personhood by saying 'I'll grab the deaf one, you grab the wheelchair' would be completely unacceptable.

At the other end of the spectrum, words loose their ability to hurt once they are not longer used as pejoratives. I doubt I would get any looks if I mentioned I was feeling a little 'mentally subnormal' this afternoon at work.

It seems to me it is incumbent upon us as adults not to restrict language, but to focus on modeling proper English as well as kindness.

Keywords: Retarded, Snowflake, Retard