WordPirates
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the point?
The aim is simply to raise our awareness of the way in
which important words are being taken over for selfish reasons.
What counts as pirated?
Words that are simply misused don't
count as pirated. For example, many people consider "hopefully"
to be misused when people really mean "I hope" and some of
us are driven nuts by the use of "impact" as a verb (not to
mention "impactful"). But those aren't pirated words. They're
just misused.
A pirated word is one that has been twisted by a political
or commercial group for their own selfish purposes. The hotel industry
knew what it was doing (well, probably) when years ago it decided that
it would call its patrons "guests." Sounds good, but it means
the opposite.
Words are pirated in order to change our way of thinking
without earning it. Pirated words try to put something over on us.
Who put you in charge of the language police?
Back off, dude! We're just hoping to start some conversations
about greedy, power-lusting groups knowingly depriving us of words that
we love and need.
What about privacy?
We are privacy absolutists. You can participate without
giving your email or name. If you do, it would take a subpoena to get
us to give your name to another organization and we will never send
you email except in the unlikely event that there's some administrative
need. See the rules.
Are entries and comments edited or managed?
We (the site's creators) reserve the right to remove postings
because they are commercial (spam), off topic, or excessively nasty.
We won't remove them simply because we don't agree with the politics
of what they say. We will remove posts that give no explanation of the
sense in which their word was pirated. See the rules.
Once I post something, who owns it?
Everything you post is covered by a Creative
Commons license that makes your postings available to anyone who
wants to use them. See the rules.
Aren't you pirating the word "pirate"
in your name for this site?
We prefer to think that we're using the word in a colorful
way :)
But, sure, one person's act of piracy is another's cleverness.
That's why there's a discussion area for every word posted on this site.
We're not trying to pass laws here. We're just providing a place where
we can remember what's packed into words that have been cynically re-defined...and
can remember what we've lost.
Why did you remove my post?
Probably because you didn't write a comment; just posting
a word doesn't tell us enough. Or possibly you thought you were being
clever by posting your name or a comment about your butt. You know,
that sort of thing.
If we acted in error, we apologize.
What's this trackback stuff on some of the pages?
It's a way of tracking who has linked to a posting or
comment so that others can find it. If your weblogging software allows
it, you can reference a posting or comment by copying the trackback
address and sticking it in the appropriate place. It's voluntary and
totally non-sinister. There's more information here.
Why don't you allow comments?
We do. Scroll the window down.
By the way, because of an annoying attack on our site,
we've had to disable the use of HTML in comments.
The links to words on the right side of the home
page don't work.
Visualize turning off your popup blocker.
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