Few remember today, but back in 1993 the New York Zoological Society tried to rename the city’s zoos “wildlife conservation parks.” The decision was made after the society’s director noticed that the word zoo had the secondary definition of “a situation or place marked by confusion or disorder.”
They quietly went back to the old name a few months later when it became clear that signs pointing to the Bronx Wildlife Conservation Park meant nothing to people looking for the Bronx Zoo. “I want people to know what they are visiting,” the director of marketing helplessly explained.
I feel we should not have let this sad concession to common sense discourage us. The rampant use of terms with undesirable pejorative secondary meanings remains one of the most critical issues facing us.
For instance, the animal currently known as the pig is not in fact a “filthy, disgusting creature,” as the word is secondarily defined. We should find another term. “Porkchop source”? “Dumpling-filling animal”? These sound more like crossword clues. It may be harder to come up with such expressions than I thought, especially just before lunch. Perhaps readers of this entry will have some suggestions of their own.
In the meantime, ferrets, which unlike pigs actually are filthy and disgusting, should be renamed “police officers.”
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