Scumbags
_Allan Siegal, the assistant managing editor who is the Times’ arbiter of usage and style, told me “we got dozens of angry messages from readers, as well as complaints from colleagues on the staff.”* Bloggers expressed their surprise and dismay. Why were people so upset?
The original meaning of scumbag is “condom.” The Oxford English Dictionary dates the term to 1967, with 1971 as the first example of the “despicable person” sense, but current research has pushed the dates back to 1935 (based on the still earlier scum, “semen,” and bag, “a condom”) and 1950 respectively.
I liked this too:
the Times’ own style manual advises, “A larger concern is for the newspaper’s character. The Times differentiates itself by taking a stand for civility in public discourse, sometimes at an acknowledged cost in the vividness of an article or two, and sometimes at the price of submitting to gibes.”
Without discussing the ‘artyfact’ form, favored by compilation editors, this article is woefully incomplete.