{"id":18186,"date":"2020-03-07T18:21:15","date_gmt":"2020-03-08T03:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/?p=18186"},"modified":"2020-03-07T18:21:15","modified_gmt":"2020-03-08T03:21:15","slug":"a-recent-usage-of-the-word-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2020\/03\/07\/a-recent-usage-of-the-word-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"A recent usage of the word \u201cmurder\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>I\u2019ve been seeing a word usage on the rise lately that I find difficult and tense-making, and I want to talk a little about it.<\/p>\r\n<p>It\u2019s the use of the word or prefix <i>murder<\/i> as a sort of an adjective, meaning something like \u201cendearingly very good at being violent for purposes that I approve of or at least don\u2019t mind.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>Some examples:<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>A character in a popular science fiction series who\u2019s known as <i>Murderbot<\/i>.<\/li>\r\n  <li>An article headline about the TV series <cite>Picard<\/cite> that referred to two of the characters as \u201cRomulan Murder Mom and Dad.\u201d<\/li>\r\n  <li>Various friends\u2019 affectionate references to (for example) their cats killing wild rodents. I\u2019m not remembering any of the exact phrases I\u2019ve seen, but the sentiment has been along the lines of \u201cMy cat is such a cute little murderboy!\u201d<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>And these kinds of phrases always make me wince a little, because my father was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2006\/03\/07\/one-year\/\">murdered<\/a> (fifteen years ago today as I write this). So to me, murder isn\u2019t a mildly interesting but distant concept; it\u2019s a deeply personal horrific event that cost me my father, changed my life for the worse, and still has traumatic aftereffects fifteen years later.<\/p>\r\n<p>I do understand that words have multiple meanings, that we adapt words for different purposes, and that sometimes turning a horrific concept into something whimsical and darkly funny can be a useful way of shielding ourselves from pain. I\u2019m not asking anyone to stop using the word <i>murder<\/i> in this way.<\/p>\r\n<p>But I continue to feel that it\u2019s a good idea to be aware of the potential effects of our metaphors and word use on others, and to make conscious choices about such things.<\/p>\r\n<p>I\u2019ve written about that general topic before, in a 2012 post about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2012\/01\/12\/violent-rhetoric\/\">violent rhetoric and metaphors<\/a>. But I feel like this use of the word <i>murder<\/i> is specific enough to be worth bringing up on its own.<\/p>\r\n<p>PS: I suspect some of you are gearing up to tell me that this use of <i>murder<\/i> is perfectly justified because the characters and creatures in question really do kill people or other animals. I\u2019m not interested in arguing about that. I\u2019m just saying that the specific word <i>murder<\/i> (outside of this cute-prefix usage) most often refers to a human illegally and intentionally killing another human, ending the life of someone who probably had friends and family to mourn their passing; and thus that the cutesifying of the word <i>murder<\/i> may be difficult for some of us to hear.<\/p>\r\n<p>PPS: It\u2019s entirely possible that plenty of people who\u2019ve lost a loved one to murder are fine with this usage. I\u2019m certainly not speaking for everyone who\u2019s been in that situation. Different people have different reactions to things.<\/p>\r\n<p>PPPS: Even if you strongly disagree with me about this, I\u2019d like to ask you to be gentle in your response. This is a difficult and painful topic for me.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-specific-words"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18186"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18188,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18186\/revisions\/18188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}