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Comment by johan_larson | Hacker News Reader

> BTW, ignorant is not a pejorative term. If you think it is you are ignorant and you need to go look the word up in a dictionary.

Did that. The Merriam-Webster, in fact. Here's what they said:

> There are several meanings of ignorant, all of which are concerned with a lack of knowledge in some sense; some of these are more insulting than others, and care should be exercised before applying this word to people who you do not wish to offend. Saying “They were ignorant of most of the laws of physics” means that the people in question did not have a specific body of learning. Saying “You are an ignorant person” is possibly describing someone as primitive, crude, or uncivilized.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ignorant

I'm going to resist the temptation to call the original author ignorant since I don't want to spawn some sort of infinitely recursive ignorance-accusation chain. Instead, I'll call him unintentionally rude.

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Far too often people confuse dictionary definitions and colloquial usage. Dictionary definitions always lag colloquial usage. The meaning of words comes from their usage and the quote you referred to seems like someone being intentionally obdurate to linguistic changes. The person acknowledges that there are people who use the word ignorant in a pejorative way.

OK, I'll bite. Do you live or work in an environment where you could call someone ignorant and be understood to mean only that there is some specific bit of knowledge they don't posses, without making a larger accusation of intellectual incompetence?

Where?

I try to be sensitive to issues of usage like this because civility does not come easily to me, and I have to be careful of what I say lest I inadvertently offend. And I am confident that when I have heard the word used, it is almost invariably in the larger sense. Use in the narrow sense tends to be by foreigners, who seem to be looking for a translation into English, and could easily not know the broader implied meaning.

I think you misunderstand my post. The person who was quoted as saying that “ignorant” isn’t pejorative since the dictionary definition of the word isn’t pejorative is being an ass. Colloquial usage trumps dictionary definitions when it comes to interpreting speech.

Depends on the context, too. Especially in non-casual contexts, where more rigor is expected, you take greater care to use and define terms more consistently in order to make communication more accurate and effective.

Oops. My bad. Sorry.

This is a great article that sums out the direction these threads typically go in and why it's generally a waste of time: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7X2j8HAkWdmMoS8PE/disputing-...

> some of these are more insulting than others, and care should be exercised before applying this word to people who you do not wish to offend

This is not in the definition. Please try to stay honest when chastising someone for not being accurate.

> a : destitute of knowledge or education

> also : lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified

> b : resulting from or showing lack of knowledge or intelligence

The claim that a term is not pejorative is a claim about usage and social reception, not definition.

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