Fact Checking Fail
Article:
7 Racist Slurs Which You Should Drop From Your Vocabulary
Link:
Fact #1:
The expression [nitty gritty] is used to imply an examination of the basic facts of the situation. It originated to refer to the bottom portions of the ships used to transit the enslaved people across the Atlantic
Check:
Agarwal actually provides a link to justify this claim. Here’s what it says:
There is no evidence to support the suggestion that ‘nitty-gritty’ has any connection with slave ships. It may have originated in the USA as an African-American expression, but that’s as near as it gets to slavery.
There is no mention that “scholars” link it to the n-word, which is the specific claim Agarwal uses the link to justify.
Lexico (formerly, Oxford Dictionaries Online… a derivative product of but not actually the OED) and Wikitionary both claim unknown origin, although you can see the latter had a discussion about Agarwal’s (general) claim more than a decade ago. Let’s just say that the pro-Agarwal explanation is… deep state-esque: no proof is evidence of proof.
In other words: fact check, fail.
Fact #2:
Yes, even this seemingly infantile cheer [hip-hip-hurray] has a dark origin behind it. Today, we commonly use it in fiction to reflect some jubilant or congratulatory emotion. However, it has a deeply anti-semitic history. The cry has its origins in the Latin phrase ‘Hieroslyma est perdita’ which means ‘Jerusalem has fallen’.
Check:
Wikipedia has several (two or three, depending on how you want to count them) sources here. None of them agree with Agarwal’s link to “today I learnt” but the logic is obviously whack.
Firstly, the anti-semitic history is based on some German pogroms. Shockingly, in Germany they do not speak English as a matter of course… even now. And in English, we do not speak German because we’re, by definition, speaking English. So, let’s not confuse “hep hep” being used in German with “hip hip” in English just because the words look similar (they’re not even the same… an example of why you need to be careful with this is the “false friend”).
Secondly, the history of “hip hip” in English predates the aforementioned German pogroms.
Once again… Agarwal is seemingly spreading urban legends as etymologies… and using the evidence of “research” to do so. In other words Agarwal is creating racist meanings and associations rather than educating people about them.
In other words: fact check, fail.
Conclusion:
Don’t read the article: don’t reward bad research. I’d check the rest of the etymologies but they don’t sound unbelievable (and one I know has the right conclusion already) and I don’t see any way of appending this to Agarwal’s “educational content” so it’s more work for what is already a rather pointless exercise.
Fake News!