"Five words that don't mean what you think they do". ^ "Pejorative | Define Pejorative at ".This suggests that reclaiming a pejorative epithet is ultimately a complex and lengthy process, as the practice can receive varying degrees of support within the social group or subculture that is involved. However, due to its history and – in some regions – continued use as a pejorative, there remain LGBT individuals who are uncomfortable with having this term applied to them. An example of a word that has been reclaimed by portions of the community that it targets is queer, which began being re-appropriated as a positive descriptor in the early 1990s by activist groups.
When performed deliberately, it is described as reclamation or reappropriation. One example is the shift in meaning of the word nice from meaning a person was foolish to meaning that a person is pleasant. When a term begins as pejorative and eventually is adopted in a non-pejorative sense, this is called melioration or amelioration. The process of pejoration can repeat itself around a single concept, leaping from word to word in a phenomenon known as the euphemism treadmill, for example as in the successive pejoration of the terms bog-house, privy-house, latrine, water closet, toilet, bathroom and restroom (US English). An example of pejoration is the shift in meaning of the word silly from meaning that a person was happy and fortunate to meaning that they are foolish and unsophisticated. In historical linguistics, the process of an inoffensive word becoming pejorative is a form of semantic drift known as pejoration.
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