Dictionary

politically correct en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Etymology

The earliest known attestation occurs in the United States in the late 18th century, in response to a toast made to the United States instead of to the people of the United States. In the early twentieth century the term was associated with the dogmatic application of Stalinist and Communist Party doctrine, and later popularized by Mao Zedong in his essay Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?(1963) which equated “correct” with “the disciplined acceptance of a party line”. In the 1970s it was adopted by wider left-wing politics. The first known use in this sense was by Toni Cade in her anthology The Black Woman (1970). It was subsequently used in a statement by Karen DeCrow in December 1975 in her capacity as president of the National Organization for Women. In the 1980s it acquired the pejorative sense when used to mock conformist liberal academics, their stereotypical political views and alleged attempts to control language.

Meanings

1. Possessing or conforming to the correct political positions; following the official policies of a government or political party.
   • Sentiments and expressions of this inaccurate kind prevail in our common, even in our convivial, language. Is a toast asked? ‘The United States’, instead of the ‘People of the United States’, is the toast given. This is not politically correct. 1793, U.S. Supreme Court, Chisholm v State of GA, 2 US 419 (1793)
   • [On] the one hand we should demand that the poet's work conform to the correct political tendency, on the other hand we have the right to expect that his work be of high quality. … I want to show you that the political tendency of a work can only be politically correct if it is also literarily correct. That means that the correct political tendency includes a literary tendency. For, just to clarify things right away, this literary tendency, which is implicitly or explicitly contained in every correct political tendency – that, and nothing else constitutes the quality of a work. 1934/1970, Walter Benjamin, "The Author as Producer" (address at the Institute for the Study of Fascism, Paris, April 27, 1934), as translated by John Heckman for New Left Review 1/62, July-August 1970
   • I am here to tell you that we are going to do those things which need to be done, not because they are politically correct, but because they are right. We are going to pass a civil rights bill if it takes all summer. 1964 March 23, Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks in Atlantic City at the Convention of the United Auto Workers:
   • Lenin gave an all-round substantiation of the impossibility of implementing the United States of Europe slogan under capitalism. He said this slogan merged with socialism and acquired political meaning only under socialism. It was politically correct also from the standpoint of the need to overthrow the three reactionary monarchies of Europe—that of Russia, of Germany and of Austria-Hungary. 1969, Y. F. Sopin, chapter 5, in The Bolshevik Party's Struggle Against Trotskyism, page 214:
2. (derogatory, idiomatic, sometimes) Sensitive to giving offense on the grounds of race, sex, etc.
   • The geth serve as a cautionary tale against the dangers of rogue AI, and in Citadel Space they are technically illegal. Advocacy groups argue, however, that an AI is a living, conscious entity deserving the same rights as organics. They argue that continued use of the term "artificial" is institutionalized racism on the part of organic life, the term "synthetic" is considered the politically correct alternative. 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Computers: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Codex entry:
   • Ah, no inhibitions Make no conditions Get a little outta line I ain't gonna act Politically correct I only wanna have a good time 1997, Shania Twain, Mutt Lange, “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”, in Come On Over, performed by Shania Twain:
   • DS Gavin Troy: But why would they want to kill her? Unless it was adultery. I suppose they could have been arse bandits. DCI Tom Barnaby: What? Troy: In the wood. Barnaby: You mean homosexuals, Troy. Troy: Well, that's what I said. Barnaby: You are as politically correct as a Nuremberg rally. 1997 March 23, Anthony Horowitz et al., “The Killings at Badger's Drift”, in Midsomer Murders:
   • It appears that in trying to solve one problem - bias - the tech giant has created another: output which tries so hard to be politically correct that it ends up being absurd. 2024, Zoe Kleinman (technology editor), "Why Google's 'woke' AI problem won't be an easy fix" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68412620 (BBC News)
   • Why do they call camels "Ships-of-the-desert" ? [...] Because they're full of Iranian seamen. (NOW, being politically correct you must, of course, substitute "martian" What a clever joke this becomes! Hopefully, there are no martians listening. ) 1981 December 14, G:kirk, “Yet Another Camel Joke”, in net.jokes (Usenet), message-ID <anews.Apopuli.106>:
   • A man cannot be politically correct and a chauvinist too. 1970, Toni Cade, The Black Woman:
3. (derogatory, idiomatic) Stereotypically left-wing; possessing or conforming to stereotypical left-wing social views.
   • Don Imus, Bernard McGuirk, Trent Lott, Larry Summers, the Duke lacrosse team, Jimmy the Greek, the kid who yelled "water buffalo" at Penn, Howard Cosell, Jon Stewart, Chief Illiniwek, Jackie Mason and "South Park" all have in common only one thing: They have not been Politically Correct. 2007 May 3, Daniel Henninger, “After Imus: End the Executions”, in Wall Street Journal:
   • From foie gras produced without making birds suffer to "sustainable" fish, British retailers and restaurants are fast embracing politically correct food, helped by celebrity-fuelled pressure. 2010, “Politically correct food on the menu in Britain”, in The Independent:
   • Even when mounted in the context of animal-centric conferences or events, exhibits of “animal art” routinely display works consisting of animal parts or taxidermied animals—most of which can be viewed while people are eating their politically correct vegan lunch. 2017, Linda Kalof, The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies, page 434:

Forms

Antonyms

unorthodox · heretical · politically incorrect

Deriveds

patriotically correct · conservatively correct

Relateds

politically correctly · political correctness · politically incorrect · politically correctness · political incorrectness

Synonyms

orthodox · dogmatic · right-on

Translations (42)

nb politisk korrekt (avoiding offense, selectively) · ka პოლიტკორექტული (avoiding offense, selectively) · fr politiquement correct (avoiding offense, selectively) · wa politicmint comifåt (avoiding offense, selectively) · nl policor (avoiding offense, selectively) · nn P.K. (avoiding offense, selectively) · yue 政治正確 /政治正确 (avoiding offense, selectively) · nn politisk korrekt (avoiding offense, selectively) · gl politicamente correcto (avoiding offense, selectively) · ja ポリティカリー・コレクト (avoiding offense, selectively) · nn PK (avoiding offense, selectively) · tr siyaseten doğru (avoiding offense, selectively) · ka პოლიტიკურად კორექტული (avoiding offense, selectively) · nl politiek correct (avoiding offense, selectively) · nb P.K. (avoiding offense, selectively) · da politisk korrekt (avoiding offense, selectively) · es políticamente correcto (avoiding offense, selectively) · ru политкорре́ктный (avoiding offense, selectively) · ja 政治的に正しい (avoiding offense, selectively) · it politicamente corretto (avoiding offense, selectively) · ca políticament correcta (avoiding offense, selectively) · cs politicky korektní (avoiding offense, selectively) · sv politiskt korrekt (avoiding offense, selectively) · de politisch korrekt (avoiding offense, selectively) · cmn 政治正確 /政治正确 (avoiding offense, selectively) · hu politikailag korrekt (avoiding offense, selectively) · ca políticament correcte (avoiding offense, selectively) · sk korektný (avoiding offense, selectively) · hu polkorrekt (avoiding offense, selectively) · mk политички исправен (avoiding offense, selectively) · ja ポリコレ (avoiding offense, selectively) · ru полити́чески корре́ктный (avoiding offense, selectively) · it politicamente corretta (avoiding offense, selectively) · ro politic corect (avoiding offense, selectively) · nb PK (avoiding offense, selectively) · fi poliittisesti korrekti (avoiding offense, selectively) · el πολιτικώς ορθό (avoiding offense, selectively) · mk политички коре́ктен (avoiding offense, selectively) · pt politicamente correta (avoiding offense, selectively) · pl poprawny politycznie (avoiding offense, selectively) · pt politicamente correto (avoiding offense, selectively) · gl politicamente correcta (avoiding offense, selectively)

wikipedia: Toni Cade Bambara · wikipedia: Karen DeCrow · wikipedia: Mao Zedong

politically correct en · VERB

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Etymology

The earliest known attestation occurs in the United States in the late 18th century, in response to a toast made to the United States instead of to the people of the United States. In the early twentieth century the term was associated with the dogmatic application of Stalinist and Communist Party doctrine, and later popularized by Mao Zedong in his essay Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?(1963) which equated “correct” with “the disciplined acceptance of a party line”. In the 1970s it was adopted by wider left-wing politics. The first known use in this sense was by Toni Cade in her anthology The Black Woman (1970). It was subsequently used in a statement by Karen DeCrow in December 1975 in her capacity as president of the National Organization for Women. In the 1980s it acquired the pejorative sense when used to mock conformist liberal academics, their stereotypical political views and alleged attempts to control language.

Meanings

1. (transitive) To modify in a way that is considered more respectful to minorities.
   • Yet we follow McIntyre into the jungles as eagerly as if we were children lost in an adventure novel by (a politically corrected) H. Rider Haggard. 2016 February 26, Ben Brantley, “Review: You See ‘The Encounter’ With Your Ears”, in New York Times:
   • There is nothing new or progressive in the politically corrected vocabularies that now amuse the prejudiced. 1998, Humphrey McQueen, Temper Democratic: How Exceptional is Australia?, Wakefield Press, →ISBN, page 190:
   • Thus, although Pastoral Paul contradicts, updates, and politically corrects Paul of the authentic letters in accordance with the horizontalized, non-sectarian interest of the Pastorals, he does this as an extension of a decidedly this-worldly, conservative paraenesis which may be seen as Paul's own contradiction of his apocalyptic eschatological interpretation. 2005, Lone Fatum, “Christ Domesticated”, in Jostein Ådna, editor, The Formation of the Early Church, Mohr Siebeck, →ISBN, page 196:
2. (transitive) To modify in a way that conforms more to the official position of a government or political party.
   • Even a senior Chinese scholar-official who had been politically correcting my arguments and opinions throughout the conference smiled and accepted that the academic standards to which we both had to comply were quite different—I would be ridiculed by my own colleagues were I to adopt the standards of China, which he nonetheless deemed the (officially sanctioned) correct ones. 2013, Andrew Martin Fischer, “Preface”, in The Disempowered Development of Tibet in China, Lexington Books, →ISBN, page xxxiv:

Forms

Relateds

woke

wikipedia: Toni Cade Bambara · wikipedia: Karen DeCrow · wikipedia: Mao Zedong