Reply #36: Can I still say "whackadoo"?

[Igel]

And doesn't it really rather matter who/what the referent is?

If I use it to dehumanize somebody worthy of sympathy and empathy, somebody who can't control their mental state, it's cruel.

If I refer to the squirrel that came up and tried to grab a roast beef sandwich out of my then-girlfriend's hand, "nutjob" suddenly is derogatory *and* ironic.

Note that such terms are nearly always derogatory, but since when should all things derogatory be prohibited? "I think he's stupid" is derogatory; "I don't think Hitler was really a very nice person" is also derogatory. "Hitler was *such* a swell guy" is, well, derogatory (with the right intonational contour). Even saying that you can't understand why usage of these words shouldn't be deleted has the implicature that you think they're wrong in some way, and *that's* derogatory.

Derogation is sorely underrated.

Now, I don't really much like general terms of abuse. "Dickhead", "fool", "retard", etc., etc. They really say less than you'd think. (Then again, most racial epithets are also just race-specific GTAs.) But when you need to emote, they're there and rather handy. It's got to get one's cognition past the emotional response, but that's the best some can muster on bad days (and for a very few, on good days ... but there I go, being derogatory again).