Roland Hulme

Retarded.

Is this a word you use? It seems commonplace in America, but I believe it would be considered highly offensive in the UK.

Octang Frye

Roland, you are weetarted. Yay!

BritGuyTN

use it all the time although my wife says I need to cut down on its usage

in order to comply I have started using '****tard' a lot more

Octang Frye

And its political variants, libtard and republitard.
A favorite of mine is 'asshat'.

Jerseygirl

I find it offensive. My daughter at one point started to use the word retarded when she was at high school...I soon put her right.

britvic

My OH does use the word Retard and I tend to say f**king something something :curse: He is not slagging off some person with disabilities by the way.

basementwaj

i like the shorter version... "you are such a TARD" for example

mellybrown

My sister says retard back in the UK (poss a common thing with 17 year olds) and it really bothered me...my aunty has severe learning disabilities and i worked as a carer for adults with learning disabilities.......however here in the us it doesnt seem to bother me when people say it so much, personally I say stuff is gay (my lesbian friend yesterday told me that electricity does not have a sexuality when i was slagging off Georgia Power..................)

I guess I define some kind of difference to being offensive and just using a work...hmmm that doesnt make much sense but i know what i mean.....

another bloody yank

I think literally, according to it's definition, it's the proper term for some types of mental disabilities. Some people have decided it's offensive and substitute phrases like "Mentally Challenged" which I find inaccurate and misleading.

Octang Frye

I do find the word 'retarded' somewhat offensive. There's also, "he rides the short bus".
Back home, we used to call people a Benny, or a Joey. I don't know where Benny came from. Possibly Crossroads?
Joey was from Joey Deacon, a nice guy with some disabilities. Used to see him a lot on Blue Peter.
His shoe fell off a ship once.
There was also 'spaz', a contraction of spastic. That's a nasty sounding word.

And Melly, I think the word you're trying to use is "ghey". There's a slight pause before you say the 'g'. Typical usage would be "Dallas Cowboys are teh ghey." - Note deliberate misspelling of 'the'.

"Georgia Power has caught teh ghey."

www.urbandictionary.com
(So you can catch up on the latest lexicon. Tonight's homework: Dirty Sanchez, Snowball, and Donkey Punch.)

mellybrown

Yes GHEY is the word!! You have to love urban dictionary!!!

TruBrit

no, i've never used the word and don't intend to....it's not nice and very offensive imo.

Hiro11

Sofa king we Todd did.

JEM3110

I prefer - "One McNugget short of a Happy Meal"

mellybrown

or one sandwich short of a picnic