Quote:
Originally Posted by 33girl
I do find "frat" offensive, as I am not looking at it from an NPHC standpoint. However, "would you call your mother a moth" is the saying I prefer.
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That's certainly a better comparison in that it avoids obscenity, but it still doesn't really work -- apples to oranges instead of apples to kumquats, maybe.
You wouldn't call your country . . . well, you know . . . because the shortened form has a specific (and offensive) meaning in and of itself, not because it is inherently disrespectful to shorten the word country. Likewise, "moth" is a word that has meaning all on its own. ('Course, my mother had an uncle that everyone simply called "Unc." And we used to refer to parents as "rents" all the time.)
"Frat," on the other hand, has no meaning apart from being a shortened form of "fraternity." It is comparable to calling a dormitory a "dorm," an organization an "org" (as is frequently done on GC), a refrigerator a "fridge" or the University of Pittsburgh "Pitt." The
only difference is that "frat" has, over the last three or so decades, acquired a negative connotation in the view of many.
I'm old enough to remember when lots of fraternity men used phrases like "the dear old frat" and nobody gave the word a second thought. I'm like agzg -- I only take offense to the term if it seems that offense is intended.
But like I've said before, the "would you call your ____ a ____" reasons for not saying "frat" are just plain annoying and stupid. How hard is it to sound credible and reasonable by just saying "Frat has connotations we don't like. We're fraternity men, not frat boys"?
[/soapbox]
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