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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 23rd, 2024

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  • Language changes through use, not through rules or intentions to “preserve” meanings. You can’t freeze a language, words evolve based on how people actually use them, and today GIMP overwhelmingly refers to the image editing software, not some outdated insult. If you search for it online, you’ll find pages of tutorials and plugins long before you even stumble on that old sense.

    English is a global language now, the majority of its speakers aren’t native, and it feels ethnocentric to assume everyone experiences a word the same way a small educated group of native speakers might. Meaning comes from context and community use, not from etymology.

    Semantic shifts and reappropriations happen all the time. Words like “queer” completely changed meaning over time. From my point of view, GIMP has done the same thing.

    Sorry if I miss some nuance, I’m not a native speaker myself…