Tuesday 24 November 2009

‘Differently Abled’

That phrase suggests to me someone in whom one of the usual faculties  is replaced by an unusual one. It would apply to someone who is blind, but has the echolocation of a bat, to someone deaf who uses telepathy instead of hearing, or to someone with no legs who has wings instead.

So far as I know, no one is differently abled in that sense; the phase is just one of the many dreary euphemisms used by sentimental people pretending that the world is a fluffy cuddly place.

2 comments :

Ged said...

Ahem, you may be forgetting my amazing ability to fall asleep at the dinner table immediately after pudding.

In my view, "differently abled" is not *quite* nonsense, but it is evidence of a certain intellectual dishonesty and should go in the same bin as anything produced by Rageh Omaar.

Richard said...

I like the idea of 'not quite nonsense' It's a concept we need :-)

Does your postprandial slumber follow the first helping of pudding, or do you sometimes stay awake long enough for seconds ?