Modern Usage
The term Chinaman is described as being offensive in most modern dictionaries and studies of usage. It is not, however, as offensive as chink, which is an unapologetically racist term. The New Fowler's Modern English Usage considers Chinaman to have a "derogatory edge", The Cambridge Guide to English Usage describes it as having "derogatory overtones", and Philip Herbst's reference work The Color of Words notes that it may be "taken as patronizing". This distinguishes it from similar ethnic names such as Englishman and Irishman, which are not used pejoratively.
In its original sense, Chinaman is almost entirely absent from British English, and has been since before 1965. However, chinaman (not capitalized) is still used in an alternative sense as a left-arm unorthodox spin in cricket. Most British dictionaries see the term Chinaman as old-fashioned, and this view is backed up by data from the British National Corpus. According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, in American English Chinaman is most often used in a "knowing" way, either satirically or to evoke the word's historical connotations. It acknowledges, however, that there is still some usage that is completely innocent. In addition, Herbst notes in The Color of Words that despite Chinaman's negative connotations, its use is not usually intended as malicious.
Read more about this topic: Chinaman (term)
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or usage:
“Families have always been in flux and often in crisis; they have never lived up to nostalgic notions about “the way things used to be.” But that doesn’t mean the malaise and anxiety people feel about modern families are delusions, that everything would be fine if we would only realize that the past was not all it’s cracked up to be. . . . Even if things were not always right in families of the past, it seems clear that some things have newly gone wrong.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore!
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)