Someone else mentioned locale differences (and has been mentioned a few places here) and that particular example came to mind since I have it in my first comment.
Not being British, I don't know how often that is used now (anyone know?).
But this also brings up important discussions like what if you are doing a time piece. You could be talking about a bundle of sticks. "Don we now our gay apparel" is something many of us sing (or at least hear) and I don't consider it offensive. But you wouldn't really write anything "new" with it, but if what you are writing is related to that time period... then it fits.
Side Note: South Park has a FANTASTIC episode on the "F" (gay) word that to me is one of the best episodes they have ever made and does a great job at pointing out that this issue is not cut and dry by any means. Season 13, Episode 12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_F_Word_(South_Park)
>> Not being British, I don't know how often that is used now (anyone know?)
Anecdotally, in Glasgow, it is still far more common to hear “I’m going out for a fag” than “i’m going out for a cig” - maybe 5 to 1-ish more common.
That said, smoking is pretty rare these days, certainly compared to ~20 years ago when the indoor ban was introduced.
There’s plenty of the population here would draw a blank and look at you confused if you tried to use the word as a slur - they’d eventually get what you mean but the slur term is not really used here, it’d be jarring to hear someone use the word that way.
Thank you for the insight, that makes sense. I mean I know I saw it referenced in comedy a lot so why change it.
Yet here we are with Google (likely, again I can't confirm it but what are the chances that "fag" and similar words are not part of this list) imposing a US English view on the world. Even if it is just a recommendation you can ignore, slowly that influences you.
How does a red squiggly line make a problem here? In a non-English language I get tons of false-positives on actually correctly written words and I just either ignore them, or “add to dictionary”. I assume dismiss or something similar is just as easy to do here, it really doesn’t worth raising our heart rate over.
Not being British, I don't know how often that is used now (anyone know?).
But this also brings up important discussions like what if you are doing a time piece. You could be talking about a bundle of sticks. "Don we now our gay apparel" is something many of us sing (or at least hear) and I don't consider it offensive. But you wouldn't really write anything "new" with it, but if what you are writing is related to that time period... then it fits.
Side Note: South Park has a FANTASTIC episode on the "F" (gay) word that to me is one of the best episodes they have ever made and does a great job at pointing out that this issue is not cut and dry by any means. Season 13, Episode 12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_F_Word_(South_Park)