politically correct
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.99 in modern English
29
Scrabble Score
18
Letters
7
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Possessing or conforming to the correct political positions; following the official policies of a government or political party.
adj
Stereotypically left-wing; possessing or conforming to stereotypical left-wing social views.
Derogatory
verb
To modify in a way that conforms more to the official position of a government or political party.
Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "Sentiments and expressions of this inaccurate kind prevail in our common, even in our convivial, language. Is a toast asked? ‘The United States’, instead of the ‘People of the United States’, is the toast given. This is not politically correct."
- "[On] the one hand we should demand that the poet's work conform to the correct political tendency, on the other hand we have the right to expect that his work be of high quality. … I want to show you that the political tendency of a work can only be politically correct if it is also literarily correct. That means that the correct political tendency includes a literary tendency. For, just to clarify things right away, this literary tendency, which is implicitly or explicitly contained in every correct political tendency – that, and nothing else constitutes the quality of a work."
- "I am here to tell you that we are going to do those things which need to be done, not because they are politically correct, but because they are right. We are going to pass a civil rights bill if it takes all summer."
- "Lenin gave an all-round substantiation of the impossibility of implementing the United States of Europe slogan under capitalism. He said this slogan merged with socialism and acquired political meaning only under socialism. It was politically correct also from the standpoint of the need to overthrow the three reactionary monarchies of Europe—that of Russia, of Germany and of Austria-Hungary."
- "A man cannot be politically correct and a chauvinist too."
- "Why do they call camels "Ships-of-the-desert" ? [...] Because they're full of Iranian seamen. (NOW, being politically correct you must, of course, substitute "martian" What a clever joke this becomes! Hopefully, there are no martians listening. )"
Etymology
The earliest known attestation occurs in the United States in the late 18th century, in response to a toast made to the United States instead of to the people of the United States. In the early twentieth century the term was associated with the dogmatic application of Stalinist and Communist Party doctrine, and later popularized by Mao Zedong in his essay Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?(1963) which equated “correct” with “the disciplined acceptance of a party line”. In the 1970s it was adopted by wider left-wing politics. The first known use in this sense was by Toni Cade in her anthology The Black Woman (1970). It was subsequently used in a statement by Karen DeCrow in December 1975 in her capacity as president of the National Organization for Women. In the 1980s it acquired the pejorative sense when used to mock conformist liberal academics, their stereotypical political views and alleged attempts to control language.
Usage
Inflected Forms
more politically correct (comparative)
most politically correct (superlative)
PC (alternative)
P.C. (alternative)
politically corrects (present, singular)
politically correcting (participle, present)
politically corrected (participle, past)
politically corrected (past)