How bad a word is cretin?

[TroublesomeLuck]

Our headteacher has recently done an interview for the school magazine where he has called Gavin Williamson "a cretin". Now I'm no fan of Gavin's. But am I right in thinking that's a terrible word for someone to be using?

It basically means idiot. It's French. If your headteacher used the other c-word in a magazine I'd be shocked, but calling him a cretin seems perfectly reasonable.

Cretinism used to be used to refer to a disability so in the same way we don't call people spastics we shouldn't be calling them cretins

Did not know that!
And DS asked me 2 days ago if cretin was a bad word/what it meant... must update my explanation!

Yes, cretin, moron and idiot are all ableist at heart.

Cretin, like moron, idiot and imbecile are often considered ableist. The medical history of their use is pretty horrific.

See this is what I thought - it's the same as using retard or spastic - just not something I would have expected someone leading a school to be saying.

Interesting to see other opinions though..

Hardly anyone understands that though, or if they do it’s a intellectual understanding of a historical use of a word that they, nor anyone they know, has actually used to refer to any disabled person.

So it’s not really anything like using spastic as an insult as everyone understands that to refer to people with a disability. And that’s why it’s offensive in a way that ‘cretin’ just isn’t.

This. But a lot of people don’t know it.
I would think an appropriate response would be a private letter to the head making him aware of the background and asking him to reconsider his usage.
This would provide a great opportunity to the head for a teachable moment, should he choose to take it.

Same as retard. It's a no no.

It's not a word I would use. And I'd be shocked at a HT teacher using it.

Though I 100% agree with the drift of his opinion on Williamson

It was a condition caused by untreated hypothyroidism, causing mental and physical impairment.
I think it’s one of the conditions covered by the heel prick diagnostic test newborn babies have.

A cretin is: "a person whose mental and physical development has been impaired by a deficiency of thyroid hormone in foetal or early life."

So it is akin to calling someone a spastic in a derogatory context. Might be worth pointing this out to the headteacher. Definitely not acceptable or professional.

Agree with this approach. As someone with hypothyroidism, albeit later onset not congenital, I would be horrified to read this in a communication from my DCs’ school and would send a strongly worded email explaining why. It doesn’t matter if people don’t understand the history of a word. Once it’s been explained they should bloody well stop using it.

I'd lump cretin in with mongol, retard, spastic and moron as words used to describe medical conditions which are massively ableist and insulting.

This. But a lot of people don’t know it

But that’s my point. The word cretin to refer to people with disabilities has completely fallen out of use, and fallen out of use so long ago that most people have no idea it ever meant that.

The word idiot has the same origin as cretin but no-one is insulted on behalf of disabled people when that is used as the word is now completely disassociated from that group of people.

Are we really at the stage of digging out of the grave dead usages of words, just so we can pretend they are offensive, even when their power to offend died along with their definition?

I'd say it's a nasty disablist term, similar to most of the others quoted up thread, (except idiot, which I think has been used so universally for such a long time as a simple insult to one's intelligence that if you started getting offended by it you'd never do anything else).

But according to posters here it does not matter how historic the word is, or that nearly everyone has no idea what the historic meaning was, it’s still offensive. So idiot should be out too, on those grounds.

I had a comment on here deleted after using the word cretin to describe an odious individual. Someone reported it and it was deleted but I was a bit shocked at the time.

It seems we are in the age of “banning” certain words if they offend someone. But obviously that is MN’s prerogative and it doesn’t stop me posting here so 🤷‍♀️

I just think it can be a slippery slope to try and erase certain words from the English language just because some people say it’s offensive.

This.
Anybody using them is saying far more about their own prejudices than anybody else's.
"Idiot" has probably come far enough to be acceptable. But not the others.
HQ, for example, will delete posts using them.

A timely cross post.
Might have been me who reported you, or anybody else who objects to such repugnant terms being used.
Educate yourself instead of getting all humphy.

I don't need to educate myself, I know what it means and where it originates from. However it has evolved to generally be used to describe a horrible individual, much like "dickhead" or "wanker".

And I'm not "humphy" - I'm in a great mood thanks!

Is nincompoop OK?

No NastyNiff, you might offend the original nincoms who came from poopland.

Anyway, if that's a word from a Ronald Dahl book it's probably going to get banned soon if the publishers have their way!

Okay, so what you are saying here is that even though when people use cretin moron, they are reflecting their own prejudices, even though they have no idea of the origin of the word and hence have no reference to disabled people in their conscious or unconscious minds (and almost certainly, neither will the person they are speaking to)

Despite this, and despite a person saying idiot, also having no idea of the historic context and neither do their audience, idiot is ok. And they don’t need to educate themselves on the meaning?

Be honest, does that make any sense at all?

And is the only difference that idiot is a word you and your mates might use?

I don't use the word cretin. But I will continue to use 'moron' and 'idiot'.