ridiculisms

those who object to accurate, inclusive language rely principally on making up silly words and then showing us how silly they are. Of course they're silly! But nobody is using them except the lead-footed humorists who made them up—talk about a straw argument! Claire Caskey, professor emeritus of Clemson University, for example, is still "manning the barricades" against "assaults" on the language; to kill with humor is his way and his after-dinner speeches are very popular. He gets laughs with every ridiculism he introduces: personkind, persondate, person your battle stations, person the lifeboats, foreperson, workpersons, personhole cover, person those pumps. Among scores of expressions created for the sole purpose of ridiculing them are: parasitically engaged (pregnant), follicularly challenged, ottoperson, vertically challenged. Using a particular to condemn a universal is a fault in logic. But then ridicule, it is said, is the first and last argument of fools.