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I used the word "renege" in a meeting the other day (something like, "the vendor decided to renege on their offer of shipping replacement SAN disks"), and got a few wide eyes.
My supervisor sat me aside just today and told me that my word choice has racial overtones, especially in mixed company, and that I should avoid using it.
I've heard that "niggardly" is somewhat taboo, but should I stop using "renege" as well? Is there a less offensive word I can use?
Although I strongly agree with the answers given so far — no racial overtones to renege — you must bear in mind that the kind of people who frequent this site are linguistically aware and, therefore, not necessarily reflective of your supervisor or your work environment.
What you’ve stumbled across in your supervisor is the “eggcorn” phenomenon, where speakers who are (partially) ignorant of some word give it a false etymology that accords with their (partial) understanding of its meaning. (For instance, acorn sounds like it’s made up of corn and a. But what’s an a? In dialects where egg rhymes with vague, it’s easy to reinterpret this as the (eponymous) compound eggcorn, as acorns are vaguely egg-shaped.)
In the case of renege, I bet your supervisor thought, “It means something negative, so it must be related to the racist derivatives of negro.” (As you correctly point out, the same thing has happened to niggardly, which is as stigmatized by some speakers as the derivatives of negro are.)
As a linguistic process, though, the phenomenon is ancient. The word bridegroom is a case in point. Historically, it ought to be bridegoom: the goom, ‘man’ (cognate with the hum part of human), of the bride. But, when English eventually lost the Anglosaxon root guma, bridegoom ceased to make intuitive sense to English speakers and was replaced by the current, somewhat bizarre compound suggesting that women marry stablehands.
Eggcorn etymologies of the sort you’ve encountered occur at the phrasal or idiomatic level too. Black magic (as opposed to white magic) and dark day are felt by some to have racist overtones or implications (Ossie Davis famously makes this case in “The English language is my enemy”, for instance) — though advocates of this view generally (universally?) ignore the fact that black and white have the same metaphorical extensions (bad versus good) in traditional Igbo and Luganda proverbs. An op ed in the The New York Times (from 1988) consequently urges prudence, or self-censorship, here.
So, though you are right, you should be aware of people’s propensity towards misconceptions in this domain.
This reminds me of when my friend and I were 8 years old or so, and he got all upset when I said that he was tittering, because he knew he'd get in trouble if his mom heard us saying tit.
I say educate them on the word, its meaning, and its roots. Then use it. Don't let 8-year-old-level keyword-driven knee-jerk reactions force you to elide a perfectly good word from your vocabulary.
Ask your boss if he thinks there are no tables in the Notables product line. Ask him if he thinks that pistachios have piss in them and whether Aster is aware her posterior is in motion. Ask him if he thinks doing something by fiat means driving around in a car. Check if he thinks despicable, The Whopper™, and nip it in the bud also have racist overtones. Will you be accused of sexual harassment if you speak of dictators? Will your boss be offended if you call an overweight coworker indefatigable? Do I wish to unfairly marginalize certain people when I discuss propagation?
The cure for ignorance is education. Do it. Save the world from them. Don't let them destroy the language.
Key for the less obvious examples above:
First off, congratulations for knowing what the word means and using it! Double points for knowing how to pronounce it.
To my ear, there is nothing racial or offensive about the word renege. Just because one racial slur contains a particular syllable, it does not in my opinion tarnish all words containing that syllable. (Think enigma and denigrate.) However, as your supervisor clearly did not like the term, you should probably use it with caution around him.
Don't stop using it - just play it by ear when you do use it, and be sensitive to sensitivity. Another option you have is pronouncing it differently. The other pronunciations in Dictionary.com are /rɪ ˈnɛg/ and /rɪˈnig/ (ri-NEG and ri-NEEG). Also note that in writing, the word will (understandably) not be nearly as controversial, in any case.
A substitute in the context you provided is go back:
The vendor decided to go back on their offer of shipping replacement parts.
I would have a similar approach to niggardly; though I don't find fault with it, others do sometimes.
I've never heard it used with racial overtones.
Medieval Latin renegare First Known Use: 1548
My guess would be they were overreacting to the 'nig' syllable.
I would concur with Daniel and just make a different word choice with those people.
