Posted on 08/22/2005 4:04:20 PM PDT by JellyJam
An online thesaurus struck a listing Monday for the word "Arab" after Arab-American groups complained the entry listed derogatory synonyms.
The entry, which appeared on thesaurus.com, listed the word as a noun meaning "beggar," and gave 16 pejorative synonyms including "homeless person" and "welfare bum."
The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee contacted the synonym book's online publisher Friday to complain about the entry; the American Arab Forum also criticized the listing on Monday.
"I looked it up and I couldn't believe what I was seeing," said Aref Assaf, president of the American Arab Forum, which is based in Paterson.
(Excerpt) Read more at theledger.com ...
How about "wife-beating child molesters?" If it was good enough for Mohammed, surely it is good enough for his followers.
I looked at the TV on 9/11 and couldn't believe what I was seeing.
How about "DUmmie?"
Those were inaccurate synonyms and hence, useless.
Arab is primarily a linguistic (and geopolitical) name. But, of course within what is considered the "Arab world" there are various other peoples and languages.
Arabs were around long before Islam.
Interesting. Evidently the political cleansing isn't just at Roget's Thesaurus. I just looked up the word "Arab" at Dictionary.com (thesaurus), and got the following entry:
Top Web Results for "Arab"
No entry found for Arab.
Did you mean Crab?
Suggestions:
Crab
Drab
Grab
What they tolerate compared to what they can't tolerate is worthy of a movie. It really is comical.
No, those were basically colloquial or common usages. Arab is connected with nomad or wanderer, so, for instance, "street arab" was a common colloquialism for a bum, before political correctness set in.
Hey Aref! You have too much time on your hands. Get a job!
I suggest A-rab as a replacement. That's the term i'm hearing out there.
Them and everyone else. Seems like there are an awful lot of people out there whose primary function is Chief Nit-Picker. It must be a lucrative career, 'cause there's alot of them!
No, the last thing you want in a thesaurus is this kind of crap:
"The easier definition is 'anyone who is Arabic,"
A thesaurus is for synonyms you t*wel-h**ded m*ron, not definitions.
The only proper response to this is to mount a campaign to expunge all of the derogatory references to Jews and Christians found within the Koran... (Yes, I know full well that not all Arabs are Muslims)
LOL! The Language Police lives! Once I tried to register a username with my last name, Mitchell, in it at Lego.com. I got back this message, "You cannot use 'hell' in your username."
Main Entry: conservative
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: moderate
Synonyms: bourgeois, cautious, constant, controlled, conventional, die-hard, fearful, firm, fogyish, fuddy-duddy, guarded, hard hat, hidebound, holding to, illiberal, inflexible, middle-of-the-road, not extreme, obstinate, old guard, old-line, orthodox, quiet, redneck, right, right-wing, sober, stable, steady, timid, traditional, traditionalistic, unchangeable, unchanging, uncreative, undaring, unimaginative, unprogressive, white bread
!!!
I discovered that listing several months ago when Ann Coulter called Helen Thomas an "arab." I looked it up on thesaurus.com and there were many derogatory synonyms for "arab," which proved that Ann had used the word in a correct context.
Throughout the history of Western literature, the word "arab" has been used to describe a huckster, peddler, or shyster, a street urchin, beggar, or scoundrel - a perfect description of Ms. Thomas who does seem to resemble a shriveled old arab hawking a monkey paw in the bazaar. This is simply part of history and English literature.
You can't deny the truth - you can only hope to erase it. This is the spirit of burning books. As usual, the Islames have nothing better to do than to work on destroying history and erasing the cultural heritage of Western civilization.
> Throughout the history of Western literature, the word "arab" has been used to describe a huckster, peddler, or shyster, a street urchin, beggar, or scoundrel..
Let's add "Arab" = someone who belongs in the Mid-east.
"Moooslim" = cockroach
Oh, lookie here!
http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=gypsy
These are all the exact same words that used to appear when you searched for "arab" on thesaurus.com.
I guess the "gypsies" don't have a powerful lobby. But if you're interested in what they scrubbed, it's almost verbatim the entry for gypsy. Words like "vagrant", "tramp", "reprobate", "moocher", "ragbag", and "derelict." Words that were synonyms for "arab" until this capitulation by thesaurus.com
Tom Sawyer said A-rab!
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