Originally posted by harry
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The term ‘Unfortunate’ was provably a euphemism for prostitute in Victorian England. As times move on and society has become less prudish on these issues the need for euphemisms naturally lessens until a word or phrase falls out of usage. Obviously these things don’t happen on one particular day or week but over time. This is why the term ‘Unfortunate’ isn’t in use today. This has been explained to you already Harry.
So when we have argued about the accepted use of ‘Unfortunate’ to have meant prostitute in Victorian England you give us an example from Jamaica and 50 years later.
We know that words can be used in all manner of ways whether grammatically correct or incorrect. These can be specific to times or just to locations. I’m have no doubt that if we looked we could find examples of other words used in different ways. Although I can’t produce this Harry (because I can’t recall where I saw it) but a few days ago I saw someone describe some people as ‘this bunch of stupids.’ The phrase stuck in my mind for some reason. Now we know that ‘stupid’ isn’t a noun but it was used as one in this case. So it’s hardly surprising that someone might at some point describe a group of unfortunate people as ‘unfortunates’ is it?
So your quote is irrelevant to the discussion at hand Harry (as I suspect that you already knew.)
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There’s little point in continuing unless you concede that you are wrong. Which you undoubtedly are Harry. In Victorian era England an ‘Unfortunate’ was a euphemism for prostitute and nothing else. Not poor, not destitute, not unlucky but prostitute.
You need to ask yourself why no one agrees with you on this (well, apart from one person but his opinion doesn’t count) Do you really think that over the last few years every single person is wrong and that you alone are correct? Come on…
It has been proven.
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