It’s a linguistic process that has been academically studied and is surprisingly straightforward once you have it laid out in front of you it’s basically “once we acknowledge word as bad, people use new_word so they can be bad without other people knowing it yet”
Good mention of the euphemism treadmill. But even without euphemisms....
"Lame," "retarded," etc.-- they were direct (non-euphemistic) words describing attributes. But because they're associated with marginalized groups, they quickly become derogatory (and euphemisms to the extent that they could express negative judgment on other things: "Fortnite is lame").
In the end, language expresses who we are: even the negative aspects of us.
"Lame," "retarded," etc.-- they were direct (non-euphemistic) words describing attributes. But because they're associated with marginalized groups, they quickly become derogatory (and euphemisms to the extent that they could express negative judgment on other things: "Fortnite is lame").
In the end, language expresses who we are: even the negative aspects of us.