political correctness
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.38 in modern English
28
Scrabble Score
20
Letters
7
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An avoidance of expressions or actions that can be perceived to exclude, marginalize or insult people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.
Uncountable
noun
An avoidance of expressions or actions that are disadvantageous or disquieting to institutions or authorities.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old prejudice with new ones."
- "I mean, people who talk about political correctness as being a kind of thought police have no idea of what a thought police is. But political correctness does have the same mentality. It means that intellectual argument is doomed. Objective truth simply becomes a thing to jeer at, because obviously there's no such thing as objectivity—unless of course you're politically okay, in which case you can be objective. Any child can see through that, but many adults can't."
- "Political correctness cripples discourse, creates ugly language and is generally stupid."
- "Methodological considerations are further complicated by implications of political correctness in evaluating texts which, aside from their history and original form, have become accepted in a certain recension (vulgata) by institutions (typically, the national churches) which, in the opinion of some scholars, should be credited with a special status."
Etymology
From politically correct + -ness.