Below are six everyday terms that actually have super offensive origins (courtesy of Oxford Dictionaries):
1. “No can do.” Today it’s a way of saying you can’t do something. But in the 1800s, it was a way of making fun of CHINESE people who spoke broken English.
2. “Long time no see.” A lot like the last one, but it was a way of imitating how Native Americans spoke English.
3. “Gypped.” as in being cheated out of something. It’s offensive to some people because it furthers the stereotype that gypsies are dishonest thieves.
4. “Paddy wagon.” The name “Paddy” used to be short for Patrick. And it was also used as a derogatory term for Irish people. It might be connected to police vehicles because cops back then were commonly of Irish descent.
5. “Basket Case.” Although basket case is typically used today to refer to a ‘person or thing regarded as useless or unable to cope’ (think of Green Day’s canonical pop-punk tune), the term originally referred to a person, usually a soldier from World War I, who has lost all four limbs. The basket in this sense refers to the basket that the person would need to be carried around in. In this sense, the word is considered very offensive.
6. To “drink the Kool-Aid.” The phrase emerged from the news coverage surrounding the mass suicide of the Peoples’ Temple, a political/religious movement in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. The members of the movement drank a cyanide-laced drink compared at the time to the fruit-flavored drink Kool-Aid.
*Bonus offensive phrase: “Rule of thumb.” OK, so this one is more of a ‘rumor’ than a verification, but it’s believed to have origins in spousal abuse. According to a statement by an eighteenth-century judge, it was legal for a man to beat his wife so long that it was with a stick no wider than his thumb.
