| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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Page 199
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| of people from many different national and ethnic backgrounds who do not necessarily compose a single unified community. Whenever possible you should consider substituting a term such as Mexican American, Cuban American, or Puerto Rican for the broader Hispanic or Latino. | 1 |
homosexual
| | Many people now avoid using homosexual because of the emphasis this term places on sexuality, and indeed gay and lesbian, which stress cultural and social matters over sex, are frequently better choices. But you need not conclude that homosexual is always or even usually offensive. It is most objectionable when used as a noun in referring to a particular person or persons; here gay man (or men) and gay woman (or women) are called for. However, when used adjectivally, as in homosexual issues or a homosexual legislator, or collectively, as in the rights of homosexuals to marry, it is usually deemed unobjectionable. | 2 |
| Historically, the homo- of homosexual derives from the Greek word meaning “same,” as in homonym or homophone, rather than from the Latin word meaning “man,” as in Homo sapiens. However, a popular reanalysis of the prefix has led many to assume that the literal meaning of homosexual is something akin to “man-sex” as opposed to its true meaning of “same-sex,” causing some people to erroneously conclude that the word applies only to men. | 3 |
hyphenated Americans
| | Naturalized immigrants to the United States and their descendants are sometimes referred to as hyphenated Americans, a term that dates to the end of the 19th century and that reflects an earlier tendency in American English to hyphenate such forms as Irish-American, German-American, and
Mexican-American both as nouns and as adjectives. Contemporary usage frowns on hyphenating these constructions, especially when used as nouns; thus, The new mayor is an Asian American; she is the first Asian-American (or Asian American) mayor in the city’s history. In the case of Native American, neither the noun nor the adjective is usually hyphenated. | 4 |
| The term hyphenated American has itself come under strong criticism as suggesting that those so designated are not as fully American as “unhyphenated” citizens, and you would do well to avoid this term except in historical contexts. | 5 |
impaired
| | The use of impaired in such expressions as hearing-impaired or visually impaired is a recent addition to the vocabulary of disability. When used as euphemisms for deaf or blind, these terms are superfluous at best and may even be offensive if taken to imply that deafness and blindness are too disturbing to mention directly. However, the notion of impairment is useful in describing conditions involving less than total loss of capacity. Thus a person is best described as hearing-impaired if he or she has a partial hearing loss and as deaf if the loss is profound. When referring to a group of people with varying degrees of sensory loss, from partial to total, you should use the term formed with impaired since it more readily suggests a range of conditions than the more absolute-sounding deaf or blind. | 6 |
| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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