Can you use the word "lynch" in a story?

If you use lynch in a story in 2019 you will be fired. That's not hard to deduce. Every word has to be chosen carefully nowadays (knock on wood that all reporters recognize the words that will cause outrage; it's really difficult to be a writer nowadays I'd imagine since copy editors are an endangered group if not totally eliminated).

 

Can't use it at all. Find a different word. If you don't get why, there are larger issues.

 

Irrespective of whether you will get fired for using it or some idiots will get offended the word has zero inherent racist meaning. In American culture the word is much more strongly associated with cowboy movies and TV than with racial murder in the South. The meaning of a word is determined by it's context. To me it sad that journalists refuse to fight this battle and give in to the PC crowd.

For example the correct response to the "chink in the armor" brouhaha would have been ESPN laughing in those critics faces and mocking their stupidity. Instead they took the cowardly way out.

 

Most words don't have much "inherit" meaning - it's almost always how they're used, who they're used by and what they're used to describe, that effect how they're received. How incredible of a writer can you be if you're ignorant of how society or your audience will receive a word, or if you just choose to ignore this aspect?

 

notable PC crowd member

 

You've created a silly and inconsistent character on here.

 

I'm consistent, just not easily stereotyped.

Anyway so you can't use chink. Next is slant, slope, yellow.

You can't use lynch. Next is hang, noose, rope.

 

Since we're on the subject of words you cannot use, you absolutely cannot use "niggardly" either. I'd dare some to try, but cruelty isn't in my DNA.

 

Remember when you used to pretend to be a black guy?

That was awesome.

 

LOL. What does that even mean?

 

Nah.

Those are fine.

 

It means, have you not previously identified yourself as a black man on here?

Have I confused you with someone else?