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Dictionary definition: political correctness
- Article from:
- Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage
- Author:
Copyright© Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage 2004, originally published by Oxford University Press 2004. (Hide copyright information)
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political correctness.
The term
political correctness
(often abbreviated to PC) arose in the 1980s, first in America and soon afterwards elsewhere. It deals with many areas of social interaction; in language it is concerned with avoiding or replacing words and uses that cause offence or are seen as discriminating against certain sections of society, e.g. by being racist or sexist or in other ways, and extends to the avoidance of terms that may be regarded even coincidentally as offensive, such as
black
in
black economy
and
blind
(
to
) meaning ‘unwilling to recognize (a fact)’, and to other words that offend various groups, e.g. deaf people, homosexuals, racial groups, women, ...