Etymology Thoughts: Future Slurs?

cw // anti-Semitism

Note: There is no specific ‘point’ to this thread. It’s just a collection of thoughts I’ve had.

Today I learned the word ‘cabal’ has anti-Semitic roots. The word, according to dictionary.com’s first definition, is: the contrived schemes of a group of persons secretly united in a plot (as to overturn a government). Also according to dictionary.com, the origins of the word come from ‘Kabbalah’, Jewish mysticism. Hence, the implication is that a ‘cabal’ is a group of Jewish people scheming some nefarious plot.

I consider myself fairly well-educated and I do my best to stand up to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Semitism, etc. whenever I see it. Yet I’ve gone my entire life without knowing about the origin of what I once thought was a perfectly innocuous word.

I’ve used the word ‘cabal’ in my writing before. It was the primary word I used to describe the group of Mind Godbloods living in Ophiuchus who planned to take over the Ophidian government and go to war with Aloutia. After today’s discovery, I plan to change how I refer to them. “Syndicate” seems safe and will likely be what I go with from here on out.

Some people might think I’m going overboard. This bit of knowledge is pretty obscure, at least outside the Jewish communities, as far as I can tell. I am not Jewish and I cannot speak for any Jewish people. But I also don’t think any authors writing in 2021 are going to be raked over the coals for having the word ‘cabal’ in their books, provided the rest of the book isn’t blatantly anti-Semitic. They could ascribe it to their ignorance rather than malice. But I’m not ignorant of it anymore, so if I were to use it, it would be in malice.

And some people might think *that* is going overboard, too. “Kira,” they say. “It’s a totally normal word these days. Just because it has anti-Semitic origins doesn’t mean you are anti-Semitic.” I’m sorry, but I cannot condone that. This word could very well be on something akin to the ‘euphemism treadmill.’ If you’re not familiar with that, I’d suggest looking it up for deeper context. In brief, it’s the tendency of words related to offensive material to become slurs over time, leading to people utilizing new words, which in turn become slurs over time. As an example, ‘idiot, imbecile, and moron’ were once a scientific terms used by doctors to describe people of certain intellectual disability. When those words became offensive, they started using… the r-slur. Then ‘special’ became the nice word. See where this is going?

So maybe ‘cabal’ isn’t egregiously offensive right now, in the year 2021, because not many people know of its origins. Will it still be that way in, say, 2060? If I have that word in my book and somebody in 2060 reads it, will they cringe because I used a word that, in their experience, in blatantly anti-Semitic? And perhaps they won’t *know* that the words was considered ‘harmless’ back in 2021? They’ll just think ‘oh that terrible Erika! She used a slur! How dare she?!”

But what about all the other words I *don’t* know about? The words that really are innocent right now, but will become slurs in the future? How can we predict these? Obviously, any word that implies harm to another group is a prime candidate for being a slur in the future, but sometimes you just don’t know what words are harmful at first glance. I am fairly well-versed in etymology, but I had no idea where ‘cabal’ came from until today, and I had never considered even looking it up! We can’t expect writers to be etymological geniuses who look up the origins of every word they use. Sometimes the changing of a word into a slur isn’t even well-known outside of the relevant community. It was only few months ago that I learned ‘transman or transwoman’ (written as one word) is a slur, because it’s just not something discussed much outside of the trans community, of which I only see fragments of because I am not trans. Likewise, I am not Jewish and I was not raised with the experiences of a Jewish person, so some of the knowledge one would acquire having lived such a life is unknown to me.

There’s also the aspect of ‘do your research’ which is lovely advice and should be done when you know you’re writing about a different community of people. But if you don’t know? If you have no idea that the word you’re using is offensive? How can you do research on something when you aren’t aware you *need* to do research? If I find out tomorrow that the word ‘penguin’ is offensive to a certain community (in all seriousness, not some anti-penguin group that pops up tomorrow just to spite me), then I will do what I can to avoid using the word, but how would I have known about it until I was told?

Where am I even going with this? Fuck if I know. I just wanted to let you all know that from now on, I won’t be using the word ‘cabal’ because I recognize its harmful origins, but I also won’t criticize anyone for using the word because I don’t expect you all to be either etymology whizzes or be familiar with anti-Semitic slurs.