Well said! Interestingly (and depressingly), we have not only the equivalent of lame ('lam') used do mean bad or stupid in Norwegian, but people also have been using deaf ('døv') in the same context for a couple of decades. Makes me cringe every time I hear it, especially as it's usually spoken in tones of dismissive contempt. :/
This is something that came into the language in recent decades, by the way, you don't hear it much or at all from the older generations and you hear it mostly from teens/twentysomethings. I'm pretty sure the use of lame that way was picked up from American English, and deaf then seemed like a natural extrapolation when 'lam' had lost the shock effect? Says something about how crass and pervasive ableism is, anyway.
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Date: 2010-10-27 06:30 am (UTC)This is something that came into the language in recent decades, by the way, you don't hear it much or at all from the older generations and you hear it mostly from teens/twentysomethings. I'm pretty sure the use of lame that way was picked up from American English, and deaf then seemed like a natural extrapolation when 'lam' had lost the shock effect? Says something about how crass and pervasive ableism is, anyway.