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Comment by brianlash | Hacker News Reader

Importantly, "Aussie," "Texan," and "Russian" aren't homonyms for fruits in the English language. Context matters.

Yes, but the context in question is "names for a group of people", since that's the context the site is using the term in. lancewiggs' point is there's already a meaning for this word in this context.

You could argue in the same way against any application theme being called "black", or for the standard printed-book color scheme being called "black on white" (omg, sexual overtones!). At what point does it become ridiculous? Does it make more sense to grab some other random word and offend someone else, or maybe make up a new one?

Does it make sense for them to take offense if I tweet that "I eat kiwis for breakfast every day"? And what in the world will we do if some language comes has "Wiki" as some great insult, rename Wikipedia?

I'm going on far too long for there to be any benefit to continuing... my question is simply this: what's the line which makes one uproar ridiculous, and another righteous? And in what way does this cross it?

Did you see the section on the front page where it describes recent new users as "Latest kiwis"? I.e an attempt to create a shorthand description for one group of people (their customers), using a word already used to (self-)describe another group of people (and that has been for decades).

None of your examples are of that category, taking a word with a pre-existing meaning in a given context and trying to give it a new meaning for commercial gain within that same context.

Yes, it's puralizing a noun. It happens all-the-frickin'-time in English.

edit: as far as examples in detail, I have none, but I would honestly be extremely surprised if there were fewer than a dozen in the world's current state, probably hundreds through time. If I come up with one, I'll be sure to include it.

In the meantime: do you wish to argue that all such acts (name of culture => modified name as product => simplification dropping the modification) are offensive, or is this one somehow worse? I ask not to ridicule, but that this stance seems (to me) to be relatively new or rare, and favoring this instance as something far more offensive than I would find it if applied to me (Best Buy's Geek Squad being a mostly similar example, OTOH. I find them mildly annoying, but nothing more).

Basically, you (the collective-you, that is) have a point, but I and probably many others here think you're overreacting, though we might be swayed by a convincing argument.

Well as a New Zealander, I can tell you that the label "latest kiwis", was weird and confusing to me. "Latest kiwis? you can become a New Zealander by signing up with some random website now?" New Zealanders themselves and friendly foreigners have used this word to describe the people of this country for decades. Nobody in NZ uses "kiwi" to describe a fruit (that would be a kiwifruit).

Which was probably quickly resolved though, since that makes no sense, and would put you at odds with a significantly-greater population (like, 100x or more) which has viewed 'kiwi' as the fruit for a decade or two, and 'kiwifruit' for a couple decades more.

Put in context of myself, if I saw a site called "TimeWisconsinite" that allowed you to create "Wisconsinites", my first thought wouldn't be to assume you can create people or register for voting rights in Wisconsin, and even if it was, I wouldn't assume that for more than an instant. And if, say, Chinese turns out to have a word that sounds the same (maybe adopted because they imported our cheese and were so wowed by it that it spread through their culture), I'd find it humorous and borderline flattering that Wisconsin had reached such wide influence (billions!).

The word kiwi is unmistakeable, short, cool and indigenous to our country. We know what it means, and have invested in the "brand" if you like for over a hundred years. With things like seriously disproportionate losses in two world wars. Yes those fighting men were Kiwis. If someone wants to wrongly use it to refer to a fruit, that's their problem.

I'd also suggest, with respect, that the label "Wisconsinite" is a rather lame and unattractive one. Let's imagine you came from another state, with a much cooler alternate name for proud natives. Imagine you were a Hoosier. Now do you think you'd be so thrilled if some website decided a Hoosier wasn't what you thought it was, instead it was some view of your twitter feeds (or something) ?

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