Dallas49er

An interesting point I haven't considered.

On my own dime, I am .....rdly, cost effective, cheap, and looking for good value for my money.

On my employer's dime, I am .....rdly, cost effective, cheap, and looking for good value for my employers money. Because most firings in my business are expense account related. but true.

bse118

I fly on my employer's dime - but that doesn't mean I am not the customer.

I have full control over where I spend my travel dollars - on what carriers, on what routes - as long as I stay within policy. I am the one making purchasing decisions for my travel.

Let's try not to generalize everyone travelling on business under a single umbrella, mkay?

pruss2ny

i'm sorry, and i know off point...but someone representing that they are "flying the plane" and then threatening the board generally with "be afraid, be very afraid"?

how in the world does this make me feel good about their competence to fly a plane? is this supposed to be funny?

skylady

I will help you to close this down, those are not very comforting words from an alleged emloyee

Dr. HFH

As asked upthread, what, exactly, is offensive about ".....rdly"?


So we shouldn't use valid English words which have no inoffensive meaning because.... Why?


.....rdly is not offensive and has no alternate meaning. Period.

How about "bigger"? Why should that not be banned, too?

CloudCoder

Back on topic, it's been proven (over and over again) that the public will not pay the cost of transit. Airlines are transit, just like city bus lines, trains, subways, etc. The price of tickets covers just some of the cost to provide the service, because people just flat won't pay the full cost. The cost of air transit is subsidized by cargo, a few big , tax breaks, etc ... which are all necessary because the public has never paid the full cost of transit.

DenverBrian

Because we care about each other as human beings more than we care about inanimate words, especially words that are used rarely. Because the language changes over time - see tar baby and ....... (the word is blocked by FT but it's the British word for cigarette or kindling). (These words "had no alternate meaning" - until they did.)

In your opinion. Also to me, .....rdly is not offensive. But I'm human enough to realize that some people may have begun to assign it an alternate meaning - we may be in the heart of the cycle of change for that word, just as there was a time when tar baby had no alternate meaning, but an alternate meaning came about for that word; just as there was a time when (the British word for cigarette or kindling) had no alternate meaning, but an alternate meaning came about for that word. Just as there was a time when the n-word was bandied about in children's rhymes like eenie-meenie-miney-mo...but now it's "catch a tiger by the toe."

Maybe someday bigger will be banned. Or niggling. Or the word similar to snicker (it's already filtered out by FT here).

But choosing to die on the hill of "I know what a word means and you don't get to change it" won't get you very far. There are way too many words that over the centuries have changed meaning. It's possiblle that .....rd and .....rdly will go in this direction. If there were no other ways to describe being a scrooge, I might jump in the fight to preserve the word too. But there are dozens of other words in the lexicon that one can use. And plenty of evidence that the use of .....rdly has increased, as Wikipedia notes, only as s sophomoric means to dance around the homonym.

Beltway2A

The folks doing mileage runs don't have any fewer EQDs than would otherwise be required for status. Doug seems to decry them not for the miles they earn, but as to why they do it.

If Saks started started distinguishing buyers between people who needed a purse to store items and people who wanted a new fashion item, I'd imagine they'd be met with similar scorn from their customers.

Oreto

It's funny that you mention "niggle" as someone called me out last year after a presentation where I used that word to describe the effect of some prior presentation details on some senior management types. I merely mentioned
that I was sorry that I happened to take "Vocabulary for the college-bound" in high school. This led to a SJW rant by H.R. about sensitivity once it was reported by that individual. About 6 months later, 2 people were asked in to H.R. over an incident regarding one of them going shopping on the day after Thanksgiving (i.e. African-American Friday) and another describing Joe Six-pack's car as an African-American sedan within earshot of the person who was so sensitive about my choice of words.

Needless to say, the tension is now worse than before even after all this time has passed. In my opinion, a little education by one person would have prevented the original situation. Whether words take on alternate meanings is difficult to predict but is sad when such actions are taken through sheer ignorance rather than through actual definitions unrelated to x-situation.

Addressing the original topic, many could see American going this way once the merger with USAir was announced. Personally, I drew down my mileage balance and have less than 50K left and the inventory/opportunity to use those miles is sparse. I might get lucky and find a suitable itinerary or I may just use them on a lower-value ticket. Race to the bottom is the best way that I've seen it described.

LovePrunes

you not knowing the meaning of a vocabulary word doesn't make it "disgraceful."
remains to be seen if the OP was using a word to try and troll people like you or not, but you fell for it if he did. Lets give him the benefit of the doubt while you look up the definition of a word you should have learned in high school

Dr. HFH

You mean until they were assumed to be offensive by people who didn't know what they really meant. I'm not going to let ignorance drive my life and language choices.


No, it in fact has no offensive meaning or etymology. Just look at the top definition in the Urban Dictionary:
If ignorant people are offended by a word which is completely inoffensive and merely sounds similar to an offensive word, then they will just have to be offended. As I said above, I'm not going to let someone else's ignorance dictate the way I speak.


I simply don't agree. Have you heard of what is commonly referred to as the Howard incident?

In January, 1999, a white aide to the mayor of Washington, DC, one David Howard, used ".....rdly" in reference to a budget item. A black member of the mayor's staff took offense and complained, and Mr. Howard resigned. (You may have heard of this, it was heavily in the press at the time.)

Here's what Julian Bond, who was then chairman of the NAACP, had to say about it:

ubernostrum

The word is archaic, fairly obscure and quite rare in English usage. In fact, as evidenced by the history of controversy, most present-day native English speakers are probably unaware it exists at all. My personal experience is that people who do use it typically are doing so with full knowledge of what other word it sounds like, and in fact choose to use it because of that. It's like those images you sometimes see on other forums which are really of a lamp or someone's armpit or whatever, but cropped or presented so as to look like something else (typically genitals or pubic areas), so that the poster can then lecture everyone else for having such a dirty mind because of what they assumed it was a picture of.

AA, meanwhile, is just another US carrier and always has been. The idea that it was some sort of "premium" or "luxury" airline brand is a myth.

AllieKat

I wish I knew who you were so I could report this to your airline, I certainly wouldn't want to be on a flight flown by someone making threats against people for using the English language.

Oh thank goodness, since I already avoid UA like the plague, I don't run any risk of being on their flights... since frankly, their statement above is extremely scary.

Katamarino

I'm a pilot myself, and the range from "Alfred Haynes" to "The morons flying AF447" is very wide. You come across as being closer to the AF447 end of the scale and, you're right, that's definitely something to be afraid of.

cmd320

This is quite concerning. I hope you are sent for some psychiatric evaluation because this kind of reaction does not sound appropriate for someone who is second in command of an aircraft which carries 180 people.

I may need to avoid AA and UA 757 flights until this matter gets cleared up.