• foggy@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    There’s an alternate pronunciation and spelling of the word snickering. Same sentiment applies.

    • PatMustard@feddit.uk
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      9 months ago

      Snickering”, as far as I can tell is just the American version of “sniggering”. I can’t track down the etymology of the split and so I can’t see any huge mentions of “it sounded a bit racist so we changed it” but I guess it seems plausible given things like “titbit” being changed to “tidbit”.

      While someone saying “niggardly” is a bit suspicious given that it’s a pretty archaic word that most people haven’t even heard of, “sniggering” is a pretty normal word to use in Britain. I imagine if some racist wants to start using it as a bit of coded bigotry they could, American-branded homophobia has already ruined the word “fags” to describe your cigs!

        • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          9 months ago

          Probably your lemmy instance censoring certain words. I don’t see “removed” in their comment

          • Heavybell@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            It’s so weird because it’s not censoring “niggardly”, only “sremoveding”.

            Edit: Oh right, “niggardly” doesn’t contain the whole N-word inside itself.

          • Heavybell@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Very frustrating to see such stupidity in Lemmy.

            It’s like how the game Dark Souls would censor any word containing “nig”, and unintentionally made anyone naming themselves “Knight whatever” look racist. In a game full of knights.

      • FanciestPants@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I believe the commenter is referring to a spelling of “snickering” that replaces the ‘ck’ with ‘gg’. I don’t have any sources to cite, but vaguely recall seeing this spelling years ago.

          • FanciestPants@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            I intended to respond to your comment, but certainly may have misunderstood the comment as well. What I meant was only that I thought Foggy was suggesting the potential racist sounding version of “snickering” that replaces the ck with gg, rather than suggesting that sremoveding sounds potentially racist.

            I wasn’t familiar with the word sremoveding before, but find the etymology fascinating and appreciate getting to learn about it.

    • GiveOver@feddit.uk
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      9 months ago

      Snigger? Jesus Christ that’s just a normal word. What’s next? Being from Niger is racist?

    • Deceptichum@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      Is the issue that it sounds like an American origin racist word?

      Should Spanish people also change their word for black because of youse?

      • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        Wait until they hear about the countries and people of Montenegro… or Niger… or Nigeria. I count myself as an honorary Welsh person. Nice harmless word - until you look into it and discover that it is at best a bad term. Should I go to war against anyone that uses the verb “welch” for all the negative connotations it has for my adopted people?

        • db2@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I still hear people using that term, but as “Welch on”. I guess it’s their evolution of “Indian giver”. 😬 Not joking, unfortunately.

          • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
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            9 months ago

            Do you mean Indigenous American Giver? Lol. Honestly, I’ve never encountered that phrase before so I looked it up. It’s probably even more problematic than the whole Welsh thing I was ranting about.

      • Ignotum@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Get away with it? Is there something wrong with that word? Doesn’t it just mean like giggling or something?

        • Chill Dude 69@lemmynsfw.comOP
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          9 months ago

          Well, yeah, it does just mean giggling. And, in all honesty, I’ve never actually seen anyone get roasted for using that word.

          Niggardly is a whole different thing, though. Ain’t no reason to use that shit.