What matters is what someone actually said, not whether it's possible to misunderstand them. Dear Bob …In this week’s Keep the Joint Running (“Methodologies are fine, so long as they aren’t processes,” 1/26/2009) you referenced the use of the word “niggardly” by a Washington D.C. official some years back.Did you have an opinion on the incident? If I recall, there was an offical reprimand or some such. Seems to me that that was overkill. The person who used the word may have been a bit stubborn in his response, too; again, as I recall without taking the trouble to search the Internet. – Just curiousDear Curious …My opinion: The official’s boss, and everyone else in the chain right up to the mayor should have supported the guy. I think the proper response would have sounded something like this: “One of our employees used the word ‘niggardly’ to describe the city’s spending policies. While I don’t agree with him … I think our spending policies are appropriate given our budget … I support his word choice.“I’m aware there is some potential for people to have mis-heard what he said, thinking he had used a highly offensive racial epithet. But ‘niggardly’ is a useful word and has nothing to do with any racial slurs.“If we start avoiding inoffensive words because they sound something like other words that are offensive, we’ll all be the poorer for it. For a start, we’ll have to rename our species because it is quite easy to misunderstand Homo sapiens. The next thing you know we’ll proscribe any word that isn’t in such common usage that it rivals “stuff” and “thing” for being common. “And just in case you aren’t familiar with it, that’s ‘proscribe,’ which means ‘ban,’ not ‘prescribe,’ which means ‘strongly recommend.’ “– Bob Technology Industry