Trope-a-Day: Insistent Terminology

Insistent Terminology: Happens fairly often, because nomenclature (among other things) is Serious Business, and one therefore – when dealing with people – should know that people earned those attributions, dammit, and that therefore not using them (or misusing them) amounts to a deliberate insult.  They would not, after all, presume to insult you by believing that you’re that socially incompetent.

And even when dealing with people’s property/inventions/jobs/works, while they do prefer to avoid euphemisms – because “refuse collector” is a perfectly honorable job that needs no excuses made for it, and the guy doing the SecDef’s job is the straight-out “Warlord of the Empire” even if his primary title is “First Lord of the Admiralty”, and “differently abled” is best avoided unless you want to experience the “what special powers did you think I got from losing a leg, you moron?” rant – a good politeness tip is to avoid all diminutives period.  Don’t use them on other people, because they’ll be interpreted as insults (and there’s no such thing as a friendly insult); don’t use them on yourself, because if it’s anything, it’s a weird species of self-hating fraud.

The ur-example of this, of course, is that while the runér will tolerate the name of their darëssef being misglossed as “noble” (after all, it’s a quality of character, as well as a feudal class), neither they nor the Senators or local Assemblymen or anyone else involved in government at any level will tolerate being referred to as a “politician”.  While that’s not a strict cognate to korásan either, it’s close enough – and with plenty of other undesirable and rather slimy overtones – to qualify as a fighting-words level insult and almost certainly a verbal Berserk Button.

The Empire doesn’t have politicians.  It has harmonizers, coordinators, synarchists, and maybe even managers, but no politicians.  Do not forget this.