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2d ago

Human man

29 comments

Here’s me finishing it in my head with a Knick knack paddy wack give a dog a bone, human man is rolling home
Just realised that old rhyme seems maybe offensive to Irish people with paddy wack, makes sense for a lot of old English nursery rhymes…
- https://www.etymonline.com/word/paddy
  Paddy-wagon is attested by 1930, perhaps so called because many police officers were Irish. Paddywhack (1811) originally meant "an Irishman;" with the second element apparently added vaguely for emphasis.
  It's not clear if it's a slur or not, or just slang for referring to an Irishman.
  I think it might be closer to referring to a Scotsman as "a Scot" than anything pejorative.
  Then again, you never know with the English... and it ultimately comes down to how the Irish feel about it
  
  I think anything that's slang for an ethnic group has like a 90% probability of being a slur
  
  If it doesn't start as one, it becomes one.

29 comments