The orks and trolls have "trog" what about vulgar slang for other (mrta)humans

Humans- Pinkies, Munkies, softy/squishies

Elves- Pansies, Twinkies,

Dwarves- stunties, fat-beards, squatters, munchkins

Ork/Troll- Skags (females)

I know alot of these aren't very original (most racial slurs are not) but maybe we can come up with some that sound "authentic".

Don't forget "nancies" for elves and "slimies" for orks and humans.

my favorite elf epithet is keeb. short for keebler. for humans, there's round-ear and norm. can't think of any others.

"Hue, Huey" "Human Waste" "Overlord"

Humans: Breeders.
Elves: Daisy-eaters, dandelion-eaters.

Your mudder played with elves, breeder!

"Small Pants", "Little Dick", "Toothless Dog"

Dwarves: Halfers

I'd suspect that some variation on monster would be used for trolls. Maybe tusker for orks.

"Meat[s]" for metahuman[s].

I'm not real fond of the human == "breeder" thing. For starters, it makes no fragging sense... there are more humans because only a minority expressed, not because the human birthrate is anything exceptional, especially when compared to the ork birthrate. On top of that, it's a real-world derogatory term for heterosexuals...

Who said slang insults had to make any sense? "Faggot" means a bundle of twigs, yet it seems to have caught on for homosexuals. Maybe some idiots between now and the 60's decided that it should apply to humans in general instead of just heteroes 'cause they liked the way it sounded.

Bigots rarely tend to be the insightful, intelligent types afterall.

Humans = "Food"
Elves = "Food"
Orks = "Food"
Trolls = "Thanksgiving dinner"

That's what happens when you have a ghoul in your campaign.

That's brilliant.

Breeder wasn't used in '89 for anything bad in real life, AFAIK.

While I don't see "breeder" as a good insult in SR, it has been used often in Sci-Fi by alien races (or programs) who see humanity as a virus/plauge/impulsive/etc... So it is a good insult. Plus, anything can be insulting if said correctly.

Well, not anything.

And breeder makes a lot of sense coming from alien races or AI, but when you fuck just like the rest of metahumanity, it's a bit sillier.

But, that said, Lime raises a good point: practically no one who uses faggot is aware of its etymology, and while potential for making sense etymologically at some point in history would be nice, it isn't necessary. I just personally find breeder too obviously hypocritical to be plausible, even if sanity is not really common when it comes to this stuff.

I think that was the idea behind the word. It was orks calling humans hipocrital for discrimination. We all do it the same way, afterall.

The Ferengi on Star Trek just call humans hoo-mons. It gets across the point of "I don't like you" if you say it right.

I don't have much trouble imagining that catching on in the SR world.

ripping totally from else where and if you follow the earthdawn timeline a bit "Mon-keigh" could be a spithanhaul slur for humans though only IE's might know it,

Which brings to mind what about the whole decended from monkeys thing in shadowrun?

Mundane humans are referred to as 'norms.' At least, they have been before. I, personally, don't mind being called a keeb. That's my perferred epithet. I think we can all do better than 'breeder,' 'meat,' and 'norm' though. Let's hear some ideas.

I'd honestly say that just "human" itself is enough of an insult if said properly. Sort of like the derogitory way a lot of foreigners say "American" when they want to be insulting about said individuals or its government.

Come to think of it, I can't recall a single vulgar insult towards caucasians that was ever really much of an insult. "Honkey," "whitey," and "cracker" all lacked that bite.

But then again it's really dependant upon what the people being insulted take as an insult that determines the success of such a vulgarity. Telling some bimbo like Paris Hilton that she can't accessorize might be enough to put her into therapy, while the same insult most likely wouldn't have the same impact on some factory worker dude named Fred.

Someone told ME that one time and i still haven't recovered.

Seriously, though, ol' boy has a point. Probably because of numbers. Honky, whitey, and cracker are applied to caucasions and there's quite a few of us. The more biting racial slurs have more effect because of the history that comes with them.

I'll assume at least some of you know how "faggot" became a derogatory term for Homosexuals....


"Breeder" is actually a little known derogatory wourd for straight people used by homosexuals.

Campbell already mentioned that it's a real world derogative for heterosexuals.

As for knowing the etymology of faggot, maybe you should tell us, given that no one actually knows how and, at best, there are vague theories that sort of, kind of make sense.

Also, guess I shouldn't tell Paris she doesn't know how to dress, then. Her clothes are a joke. If I didn't know better, I'd just assume she couldn't afford it.

Not true. Or, at least, that's not where he term comes from. Certainly, it's one of many possible etymologies, but consider that it was also at times a derogative term for women and a symbol that converted heretics were forced to wear (specifically, an emroidered faggot). I heard that they were burned in town squares by SS, at one point. All the stories are variations on a theme, and though it's obviously an awful term, the etymology is very much less clear.

The burning at the stake sounds like an embelishment. Here we have another explaination (that is based on various dictionary and other etymology sources): http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorf.htm

Faggot
The most common explanation for the homosexual epithet goes like this: Faggot is a bundle of sticks, from the Italian. In the late 16th century, the word acquired the sense of a woman, especially a shrewish one. The sense probably comes from the idea of a faggot being a burden or baggage (not unlike the modern ball and chain). Jump to the US, circa 1917, and the word transferred to effeminate or homosexual men.

Some suggest that it might be influenced by the Yiddish word fagele, literally meaning little bird. I wouldn't dismiss a possible Yiddish influence out of hand, but it seems less likely than the standard explanation. There is an awful big gap in the history, and a Yiddishism appearing in the early 20th century US is plausible. But I don't know of any evidence to support it. And it could have gone the other way--the homosexual sense of the Yiddish word may have derived from the English faggot. Although, I'll defer to a Yiddish scholar on this last.

How exactly is a homosexual relative to baggage? That makes about as much sense as "bundle of sticks" to begin with.

I didn't mean a homosexual is like baggage. I meant a girlfriend (or boyfriend, for that matter) is. I had a girlfriend, Once.

I think he means that a faggot (burdensom bundle of sticks) became like a woman-->stereotypical gay man are feminine-->bundensom bundle of sticks (faggot).

'I heard it' as in I've heard a number of stories like that, all of whose credibility is rather suspect.

Were homosexuals tortured in horrific ways throughout history? Yes. Were homosexuals tortured in horrific ways during and by the Nazi regime, including by the SA and SS? Yes. Were they burned at the stake? Possibly. Is that the basis for the modern use of the word faggot as a derogative? Not likely.

As for homosexuals being baggage, the relation is more in that homosexual men (faggot is primarily used as a derogative for men) are stereotypically effeminate. The term simply eventually transferred, or so the theory goes. There are also (lesser known and less credible) theories that suppose it could've come from the term being used to refer to freshmen boys at school who performed menial tasks (and maybe sexual favors) for the senior boys. Faggot likely came to that usage also because of the burden meaning, and, well, where it goes from there is obvious. Naturally, hard to say for sure in any direction.

Opps.

Two posts ago, I meant to say "couldn't" instead of "could".

Sorry for the confusion.

I heard that it's because they're supposed to burn in hell. You bundle a bunch of sticks together to use in a fire, and so God bundles all of the homosexuals together and casts them into the pit of hell or whatever.

Then again, I heard it in some speech from that "God Hates Fags" Westboro Church guy who had a good talk-show run years ago. Where'd that guy go, anyway?

If somebody from long ago were to have asked for ideas for vulgar terms that people in 2000 would use for homosexuals, nobody would have ever said - oh they will call them faggots, and even if they did, it wouldn't have made sense to the people at the time.

So pick any word you like and trace back a hypothetical history, maybe linked to events in SR timeline and you will have created a slur with as much legitimacy as you need. For realism, dont make it over 2 syllables, make it easy to say and easy to say venomously. You prolly wanna use at least consonant where the mouth is mostly closed pronouncing it (b,d,f,g,j,k,m,n,p,t,v) since it is difficult for the unwashed masses to really feel like they have expressed their hate when they cannot pronounce it violently.


Example
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Pit -

The single central kernel or stone of certain fruits, such as a peach or cherry.
Vulgar slang for human.

Scholars typically trace the roots of the slur to a speech by Dr. Francine Geer of MIT&T on the future of magic in UCAS society. Dr. Geer analogized the Sixth World as the blossoming of magic, directing her audience to appreciate the fruit which would come, but take care to remove the pit.

It is largely agreed that Dr. Geer's "pit" analogy was directed to her distrust of voodoo practitioners, however it seemed to take hold among non-human sentient races, first and foremost among ork populations in the northeast. There it seemed to aquire a concept that the non-human races were the fruit with the seed or pit being humanity, which would expectedly be tossed out in favor of the better "fruit" races. The term has evolved to imply that normal humans are something less than the expressed races, that soon humanity will be like an appendix, no longer useful nor valuable.

--------

When you say "pit" draw out the P, make the t sharp and skip over the i as much as you can. Remember, the word is meant to be as close to an act of violence as you can get speaking. You arent really giving humans a name or word, it is a sound you make with your mouth that expresses disgust, more like a snort or cough.

So do something like that and you will have what you want.

"Floatee, Floater"

Humans and Elves are the only metaraces that float naturally. "Fraggin' floaters."

[edit] Which naturally leads to "Sinkers" for metahumans, especially tusks.

"Infected" might be a meta term by the real hardcore Humanis who still believe it a disease. "Kligon" for Orks. "Sparky, Sparks" for Dwarves indicating their use during the Night of Rage as kindling. "Firestarter" for Humans, of the same origin.

[edit] "Tiwt, Twig, Faggot" for Dwarves.

Then, of course, there's the universally useful "asshole." Applicable to anyone who displeases you.

Just to throw in a comment -

The whole "faggot" thing is American and it's only come into usage over here in the past few years (as these things tend to do), although even now it's not common. Faggots are actually meat mixed with bread and herbs (try a google search for - faggot food - and check the BBC result) so the word gets used on TV advertisements freely and any insult would have to depend on context.

Even more bizarre when the shortened form also means something else here - when my wife goes out for a fag she's not really seeing homosexual men behind my back, is she?

The point is that the insult is derived from context and delivery rather than any inherant property of the word, etymology be damned.

Remember that the next time someone calls you a w@nker - it's actually fairly normal behaviour, most people do it and the insulter probably is one as well.

Back to the topic now

how about 'bug bait'.

simple, effective, and oft entirely too true...

Squishy, pinkie, norm, breeder, shorty (from trolls mostly)...usually the majority race in any situation isn't prone to slurs. I mean the worst caucasions get these days is "cracker", "white boy", and "wigger". The worst straight people get is "breeder". The worst humans get from metahumans is "norm". Remember, a lot of these morons have it built up in their minds that "it's not about racism, it's about pride for our race", therefore slurs against them don't have any meaning to them. I unfortunately live in the south and have to live with this shit a lot. I imagine in the 2060s, it's a lot like today with racism against blacks/asians/hispanics/etc. There's only a very very small but vocal minority who is hard-core against the race, but a good percentage have "tendancies" or small prejudices (IE all orks are criminals, you shouldn't date outside your race, etc.) I honestly don't know which is worse. The vocal ones at least advertise what they are so you can kick the shit out of them on sight. The non-vocal ones might not reveal their prejudices until you've been talking to them for a long time.

The Abstruse One

Here is the story of where 'faggot' came from that I was told. (along with the sources I was given at the time)

-- YMMV, IME, etc.. --

Originally, 'faggot' meant a poor substitute; as in a substitute of lesser value either interms of money or ability. It was used to describe a bundle of small sticks tied together by those too poor to afford logs. They were considered a poor substitute, hence 'faggots'.

Later, in the feudal era, noblemen were expected to supply their first (or was it second?) son to fight in the king's armies. Some would pay a common boy's family to send him in place of the noble child. This practice was known as 'faggoting', since the common child was a poor substitute.

Cigarettes were faggots (later contracted to 'fags') because they were a poor substitute for a real cigar.

In public school, the faggot was a boy who did not have his own money (or wanted more) and so worked for the older boys. Some shined shoes, some dropped a lot of soap... Either way, they were cheaper than a servant/prostitute but not as good.

Homosexuals were a poor substitute for a woman.

The meat things? I have no idea, ask Mr Brain...

"I'm not your mate, fag."

Firewall - that actually makes perfect sense...

The meat thing seems pretty obvious when you put it like that - faggots are part meat, part bread, obviously cheaper than a "pure" meat product, which fits in perfectly with your explanation. Funny thing is that I was convinced they were suet based (more like dumplings) until I actually bothered to look it up.

Anyway, the point stands that one need not know the correct etymology of a word to use it as an insult and in many cases the meaning can and does change over time...

I don't think anyone has brought up "stunty" for dwarves yet.

In any case, I'm more worried about frag, myself. Not as a derogative, but just as slang, it's kind of silly that we weren't using fuck grenades back in WW2, but 60 years before 2060...