> shanghaied
Nit: We can probably retire this term now.
Nit: We can probably retire this term now.
I don't think that's what "descriptive" means. The term is as descriptive as much as "laconic" or "china" or "japan" (meaning varnish) - in each case, you can't independently derive the word's meaning from the original place name.
(Since I'm getting downvoted anyway - anyone avoiding the overwhelmingly more common near-synonym, "drafted", is doing so because they don't like to remember that the US can still do it, too.)
The former I expect to be a highly managed process through which the state renders you unable to seek employment, housing, education, free movement etc, in order to coerce or capture you violating the law, encouraging you to present yourself willingly rather than dealing with criminal charges in addition to or instead of conscription.
The latter, my expectation is that mercenary recruiters, driven by sales team esque metrics, eventually resort to pulling random young men off the street, out of bars, etc, based on a best guess of the young man's age. It's far more chaotic, error prone, and disruptive to family life, while being less coersive.
Did you know all words are just sounds with an arbitrary connection to what they describe (except the unusual case of onomatopoeia, of course)?
It's exactly as descriptive as most other words, and the benefit over a neologism is the arbitrary connection has already been established in speakers' minds.
FWIW, according to https://wordhistories.net/2019/07/16/shanghai-kidnap/ , in 1857, in San Francisco, they considered the term vulgar slang:
> It was suspected that he had been drugged and carried off, or, as it is vulgarly called, “Shanghaied,” on the ship Oliver Jordan, which sailed yesterday.
I don't think it's necessarily wrong, my issue with it is that the policing comes usually with snark. As if only total disgust to a term and a middling aggressive tone will help.
I only got to learn how some terms can be harmful through empathy, and try to apply that when trying to make a point about why I think using term such-and-such wrong. Even then I still reject when someone approaches someone's perceived non-politically correct speech with snark, we should save that for egregious instances of it, not for small slights...
> Telling people how to talk is just wrong in my opinion
Everyone has their line, though. Not knowing anything about you, I will wager there is some language you were maybe OK with 20 years ago, which you're not cool with today?
I had to look it up because this is first time I heard this nonsense term, so it's not like it's commonly used
*everyone but those poor souls being drafted or invaded...
I wonder how many people are trafficked in Shanghai these days tho.
The expression "to shanghai someone" doesn't just derive from the city name -- it is the city name. And the term originated at a time when respect by the West for Chinese people was not at a historical high point.