ADMIN NOTE: While this subject matter obviously permits the use and discussion of racial and ethnic slurs, it is not an excuse to lace anti-PC screeds with your favorite ones, or deploy obvious homophones because your moronic idea of fun is to explain etymology to “niggardly” people. Everyone does, indeed, see what you did there.
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None of those are intentionally misspelled slurs, they’re different words altogether.
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I don’t know why this took so long to occur to me:
In German, the word for beetle (and in some dialects by extension cockroach) is Käfer. The Dutch is kever. It seems far more likely to me that the slur was colonists calling black people cockroaches than the tortured etymologies trying to link the slur to an Arabic word meaning “non-Muslim” or the Southeast Asian lime.
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Kaffir lime is also not a slur, it just has a homonym that is a slur in a specific culture (which is now wider-known). Especially if the name comes from a language with a different writing system, we are free to change the English spelling to remove the casual connection to the slur in order to make it clear that there was never a connection in meaning in the first place. As it turns out, there are a number of other acceptable terms that could be used to avoid the whole controversy, but these aren’t as well known and it’s not so surprising if a company chooses to keep the link to the more common word.
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I don’t think I have ever seen Käfer used as any kind of slur or as a term for a cockroach.
I am not sure what is so tortured about the Arabic etymology. Nobody is postulating that the Boers got it straight from the source. Words of that presumed etymology have been used in various European languages since the 16th century. What reason would for example the Portuguese of that era have to name East Africans (certainly in contact with the Arabic world) after German beetles?
Shrug. In the (Saxon) German-speaking household I grew up in (which had plenty of them) that’s what they were called.
The article doesn’t reference anything derogatory nearly as far back as the 16th century. What reason would the Portuguese have to name East Africans after “non-Muslims?” There were certainly plenty of Muslims there.
[quote=“L_Mariachi, post:92, topic:37351, full:true”]The article doesn’t reference anything derogatory nearly as far back as the 16th century.[/quote]I didn’t say that.[quote]What reason would the Portuguese have to name East Africans after “non-Muslims?” There were certainly plenty of Muslims there.[/quote]How about the trading ports on the East coast with their Arab presence being their primary contacts and the Portuguese (and others) adopting their term for the non-Muslim locals?
Kaffir limes (and their leaves) aren’t exactly well known, either. Like, do most beer drinkers know what kaffir lime is or tastes like, and would they be so confused if it was simply called makrut lime? I have my doubts.
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“most” beer drinkers don’t, but kaffir lime leaves are a trendy ingredient in the homebrewing scene. also anyone who’s semi-seriously cooked asian food will have at least heard of kaffir lime leaves.
They’re insanely difficult to find in the US, especially fresh ones (or were a couple of years ago, and since the rarity seemed to be due to governmental restrictions for fear of biological contamination, I doubt much has changed). I mean, you can’t even get them at Kalustyan’s in NYC all the time, let alone your average Chinatown shop. I finally found some at the Bangkok Center Grocery just off Mott Street, and I’ve really only seen them at specialty Thai markets in the US. And guess what? These markets are going to know what you’re talking about when you ask for Makrut Lime leaves, or even simply lime leaves. And they’re definitely not a pan-Asian ingredient any more than yuzu or gobo/burdock root is a pan-Asian ingredient, so it’s not a given that someone who cooks “asian food” would have heard of them.
Faggot originally meant a bundle of firewood wrapped with a rope - its related to fasces.
A cigarette is tobacco wrapped up in paper - hence a faggot of tobacco.
The food faggot is offal wrapped up in the omentum membrane and cooked.
‘loose stuff wrapped up to keep it together’ applies in all 3 cases.
As for ‘homosexual’, my suspicion is that it’s connected the practice of ‘fagging’ in boarding schools:
There’s a another usage as well: ‘I’m all fagged out’ means ‘I’m tired’, with no sexual connotation.
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Oh, whatever. Just google for “kaffir lime leaves recipe” and “makrut lime leaves recipe” if you don’t believe me. For better or worse, they’re usually called kaffir lime leaves. They’re far from impossible to find, especially in homebrew shops (where they are greatly overpriced).
And they’re a pretty common ingredient in many Southeast Asian recipes. That’s why I said “semi-serious”; it’s easy enough to run into a recipe using them. Your pedantry is not impressive and not informative.
Oh, look, even Bangkok Grocery calls them kaffir limes despite the Thai name being “makrut”. This is because it’s the canonical name.
This is not 'nam. There are rules!
Yet another theory for the derivation of “paddy wagon” is that the inside of the cell for the arrestees was (minimally) padded, and so were called “padded wagons”.
+1 on the meh brigade
The word’s use far predates any racial connotation so I really don’t get it. “Makrut” lime seems like a viable (and already existing alternative) that seems to have had earlier english-language use than “Kafir”. Someone pointed out that in Japanese they’re called “Kobumikan” which translates to the impossibly cute “Bumpy Mandarin”.
I know what they’re usually called. This isn’t a question of what they’re usually called; it’s a question of what they should be called.
And homebrew shops you’re talking about must have a remarkably small web presence, because I wasn’t really able to find any shops selling them (or forums that say they readily available) in a quick search: for the most part I find people saying they’re ordering from specialty Asian food stores or finding them in SA Asian shops.
I see. So if someone is a “semi-serious” cook of “asian food,” they will know about kaffir lime, even though Asia is a huge continent, there are lots of Asian cuisines, and the lime is really only use in SE Asian cooking. And hey, just as “anyone who’s semi-seriously cooked asian food will have at least heard of kaffir lime leaves,” anyone who has a semi-serious grasp of world literature or history will have at least heard of kaffir used as a slur. This is why my pointing out the deep lack of cultural awareness or sensitivity in your post about “asian food” in an attempt to defend a cultural slur is not simple pedantry.
Is it just me, or does the link not show that at all? Kaffir lime really only makes a serious appearance in the 1980s, while taking a look at the results from 1800-1907 they pretty much all use the word to describe black people in South Africa, which is about as clear a racial connotation as possible.
Sorry, I should’ve been more specific: The word’s use as a non-overtly racist epithet far predates its use as one. Just as the N-bomb started its life with southern yokels who couldn’t pronounce innocent-enough words (negro) in their own language, kaffir has gone from a word that non-pejoratively describes a group of people (well, as non-pejorative as one could be in the 19th century) to one that was co-opted by racists during apartheid.
You may be right that the ngram results for ‘kafir’ relate to its use in South Africa, considering the first segregation laws were enacted around the time of that spike but again, I wonder how pejorative/descriptive the use of the word was at that time. Anyway, like I said… “makrut” seems like a perfectly acceptable alternative. I’m going with bumpy mandarin.
Yeah, but I wonder if the fact that it wasn’t “overtly racist” didn’t have something to do with the fact that it was pretty much universally accepted (and legally enshrined) that they were inferior beings with lesser rights. You really didn’t need to use hateful language to remind them of, or otherwise reinforce, their status. Maybe it’s like the Planet of the Apes: there was no need to describe other simians as “damned dirty apes” until they actually started to assert themselves as equals. And, as you allude to, the “non-overtly racist” origin of the N-word doesn’t exactly excuse its use today.
from the linked article:
reporting that they had found the name (in a Portuguese spelling, caffre-) in a reference published in England in 1888, describing a fruit that a botanist had found in Sri Lanka.
Oh, a single appearance in 1888 using a Portuguese spelling represents a serious appearance of the word and implies widespread usage? Thanks for the pro-tip.
