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"tapinosis"
Definition: Name calling: undignified language that debases a person or thing. Generally considered a vice, not a self-conscious technique. A kind of meiosis.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "reduction, humiliation"
Examples and Observations:
- "Achilles? A drayman, a porter, a very camel!"
(William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida)
- "During the first Roosevelt administration, General Johnson's tongue and typewriter battered away at the Republican opposition. Some of the opponents of the New Deal were the scum of intellectual prostitutes; others were academic mercenaries; and Republican thinkers were intellectual hippopotami."
(Fon W. Boardman, Jr., "Political Name Calling," American Speech, 1940)
- "Bad names have played a tremendously powerful role in the history of the world and in our own individual development. They have ruined reputations, stirred men and women to outstanding accomplishments, sent others to prison cells, and made men mad enough to enter battle and slaughter their fellowmen."
(Institute for Propaganda Analysis, 1938)
- "If your spics and your spades want their rightful share of the American dream, let 'em get out there and hustle for it like I done."
(Archie Bunker in an episode of All in the Family)
- "I was going to have a few comments about John Edwards, but you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot.'"
(Ann Coulter speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, March 5, 2007)
- "Ann Coulter, maniacal, money hungry, far right-wing nut burger has called John Edwards a 'faggot.'"
(abillings's journal, March 6, 2007)
- Patient: Dr. Chase said my calcium is normal.
Dr. House: We call him "Dr. Idiot."
("Informed Consent," House, M.D.)
- "There are cretins, there are cowards, there are rats who walk like men. And then there is Larry Patterson Jr."
(Leonard Pitts, "The Lowest of the Low," Feb. 22, 2008)
Pronunciation: tap-ah-NO-sis Also Known As: abbaser, humiliatio
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