Jew

this is always a noun, never a verb, never an adjective. The American Heritage Book of English Usage says the "attributive use of the noun Jew, in phrases such as Jew banker or Jew ethics, is both vulgar and highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility." Author and scholar Osha Gray Davidson (in Des Moines Register) has observed people torturing their syntax to use "Jewish person/people" when "Jew/Jews" clearly would fit the sentence structure better. He suspects that people know "Jew" is sometimes used as an epithet and so, with the best intentions, they reject that perversion. "But in the process they have cut out the word altogether, like a doctor who treats an infected finger by amputating the arm. The result: The perfectly acceptable name for a people with a 4,000-year history has, in certain circles, become the 'J-word.'" Irving Lewis Allen (Unkind Words ) points out that the same thing has happened to "Poles" and "Swedes"; because of old derogatory uses that tainted these perfectly good proper names, they are replaced by circumlocutions. Davidson adds that "Jewish" is an adjective; "It suggests an inessential quality, a trait cobbled on and easily dismissed. Worse, the '-ish' form is the 98-pound weakling of Grammar Beach; even other adjectives kick sand in its face. It denotes tendency rather than a full-blown characteristic, a wishy-washing retreat from beingness. She is tallish. It is warmish out.... One doesn't need to be a Holocaust scholar to grasp that once a society considers it uncouth to say 'Jew,' eventually—inevitably—it will become unsafe to be a Jew. What are words, after all, but the womb in which tomorrow's deeds slumber?" See also anti-Semitism, jew boy, jew down, Jewish-American Princess (JAP), Jewish mother, Jewish question, Judeo-Christian.