"lame" is one of those words where virtually nobody uses it in its original sense of "unable to walk properly because of a problem with one's feet or legs". In fact, I suspect that if you polled a random set of teenage users of the word, few would even know this meaning, much less intend it when accusing a TV show, a new flavor of Doritos or their parents of being "lame".

As a somewhat tenuous comparison, should we stop saying "goodbye" because it used to mean "God be with ye" and it's taking God's name in vain?

> As a somewhat tenuous comparison, should we stop saying "goodbye" because it used to mean "God be with ye" ...

Thanks for a wonderful piece of trivia to start the week. I had no idea this was the source of the word, but it sure was [0]. And equally fascinating, good-day [1] predates good-bye by around 400 years.

[0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/good-bye

[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/good-day

As someone born with a condition that gives me a limp, I would have to try very very hard to be offended at this headline. I prefer not to try that hard and am happy to employ a useful metaphor.

I had to look this up, but I guess you meant ableist language [1], i.e. you're opposed to the use of the word "lame" here.

To me, not being a native speaker but having been part of the European demo scene 30 years ago, "lame" in the context of computing never means anything other than the opposite of cool, basically [2] which I of course assume is the meaning intended here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamer

I had the same problem (also not native speaker). I first thought the problem here was the use of the word "war".

So people, please be charitable. Connotations of words differ, and English is spoken and written by people all over the world with different backgrounds :)

Should we really tiptoe around the language to protect people from negative feelings caused by out of context association?

Words have different meanings in different contexts and new meanings develop from previous ones. When I first read about how people want to ban the use of the word "supremacy" as in quantum supremacy, I thought it was satire.

Word used for insult can develop positive or neutral meanings later. If we take the approach that once there is negative association, the world is removed, it just limits the language without possibility that the word becomes mostly neutral.

I agree with you. It's a bit frustrating though, when moving towards language that doesn't harm any other groups of people, I lose so much of the color and succinctness of the language I was previously using; I find that I'm limited to saying minor variations of, "I feel negatively about that because of reasons (that cannot be succinctly said and make me sound like I care more about hearing myself talk than my audience's ability to listen)."

Find colourful substitutes, then. "Clownboat", "absolute biscuit" or similar. Might not be as succinct but they're even more colourful.

I honestly wish I could have come up with those substitutes. I have a great deal of trouble in independently finding language that sounds like that since no one I listen to/read talks/writes like that. I'll have to jump down the rabbit hole of finding people that use that kind of language for more substitutes.

Have you considered editing it to remove the offending language?

Let's not start nested wars.