Posted on 10/07/2007 11:28:49 AM PDT by Stoat
You’re quite right, of course, to say that usage and longevity don’t automatically confer respectability: but you are quite mistaken about the connotations of this term in Britain, which have never been at all pejorative. The colloquialism became current at the same time as the collar itself was replacing the previously traditional long white clerical bands as the normal ‘uniform’ for Church of England clergymen: and remember that this was the time, in the latter half of the 19th century, when the CoE was at the apogee of its power and repect. Ever since then it has been the universally used term by those in and of the Church, as well as those outside it. Its connotations throughout my own (longish) lifetime here in England, and well before, have been of affectionate, familiar respect, not in the least derogatory. There’s a distinction between colloquialism and slang; and this term belongs firmly in the former category.
What an insulting headline
I would love to see headline
“Journalists and liberals muzzled in public.”
Probably happen when pigs fly
headline also insulting considering another story posted here yesterday about fireman being disciplined for observing gay sex in park. Cannot remember title of story, but derogatory term for what the perps were doing in park was “dogger or dogging”
Not derogatory -- but not something I'd say myself (at least not where a clergyman I didn't know well might hear me!)
If the OED is to be believed, it was actually a bishop who first used the expression with this sense!
We are "PC-ing" ourseleves to death these days.
I can see where the name came from because of the physical resemblance and the contrast with the Roman collar. I'm sure no serious disrespect was intended!
After all, think of the Dominicans (Domini canes)!
What I want to know is, where did St. Dominic find a yellow Lab? (they'll carry anything in their mouths - including flaming torches).
That image reminds me that to judge from some of their memoirs, Victorian country parsons often devoted as much pastoral care to their canine as their human parishioners. That being the case, it would not have occurred to them that there was anything untoward in the application of a canine metaphor to their professional garb!
(dear Mr. Trollope!)
As for “utterly pejorative words”, time was many of those same words could be said in polite society and noone would bat an eyelash. Calling an African American “black” at one time was “progressive. An “coloured person” is verboten. Now a “person of colour” is en vogue
But if the Anglicans don’t mind who am I to say otherwise?
You're dead wrong on that. I don't know how old you are, but I'm on the shady side of 50, and my maternal grandmother (born 1895) would NEVER have used such words, and they were NOT acceptable in polite society, EVER.
She was a D.A.R., white-glove-and-pearls, Southern Lady. No well-bred person would have used such language in her generation, my mother's generation, or mine. It just was not done.
Why does the British press insist on calling them “yobs”?
Why not call them filthy Muslim criminals?
Even in the days of Saml. Clemens, it was Huck, Pap, and the river crowd that used the "N-word", not Aunt Polly, Judge Thatcher, or any of the well to do townsfolk. Even in those days it was considered low, Clemens used it in Huckleberry Finn to make a point -- it was the only way human debris like Pap could find to hold themselves above SOMEbody.
"Negro" is actually the correct anthropological term and was not considered derogatory until the "Black Power" movement of the sixties. My grandmother not only used that term, she also used "Negress". Now THAT would get Al Sharpton's BVDs in a bunch. Some older ladies of color in my youth preferred the term "colored" and of course their preference was honored.
Nobody said "darky" outside of a minstrel show, certainly not a lady.
My father has been an Episcopal minister here in the U.S. for over 50 years -- and I've always known the term "dog collar" for them. I consider it a familiar, not disrespectful, term.
Of course it's not a "proper" term, but it's so long been an "in" usage, people who make a fuss about it are clearly not Anglicans. (I can't speak for RCs.)
It's sort of like the U.S. term "Whisk(e)ypalians" -- an internal jest that might look offensive, pejorative and derogatory to an outsider.
(But use it in those contexts and you may have a battle on your hands.)
Thank you! The same is true this side of the pond.
As I understand "yob", they're far from being all Muslims, immigrants, or whatever. A vast number of them are home-grown (genetic, if you will) Anglos.
Q: "Do Episcopalians believe in smoking and drinking?"
A: "Yes, but they're not necessary for salvation."
"Episcopagan" may be more accurate these days . . .
LOL!
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