In 1998, I think it was, a white public official used the word "niggardly", and this provoked a storm from African-Americans, because it sounded like The N-word. Actually, it means "stingily", and may have an earlier origin with this reference that the latter.

But I never use it for two good reasons:

• People who don't know the meaning and origin of the word will confuse it with the PEJORATIVE term.
• Even if you know the meaning, it SUBLIMINALLY connects to the PEJORATIVE. (As I note elsewhere, I am much concerned by SUBLIMINAL effects, particularly those from LANGUAGE.) So, avoiding the term, avoids evoking the SUBLIMINAL CONNECTION. (For exmple, do you realize that in using the word "conscience", you may be suggesting to your listenerthat "The purpose of conscience is to con science".)

I early intuited that this can happen with a whole "family" of words with the prefix, "black-". For example, "blackguard"; "blackhearted"; "blackleg"; "blackmail"; ettsettery. So I avoided using these words in speaking or writing, whenever I thought about it. But I guess I vaguely wondered why the "black"-prefix.

Then I looked it up in the dictionary. It comes from usage of my Scot ancestors. Times past, Scotland suffered as much from feudalism as England and European countries. Oppressed, hungry "serfs" go poaching -- steathily killing the forested animals of their Lords (or Lairds). In Scotland, these poachers often wore kilts. And camouflage was achieved by wearing black kilts in the underbush.

Ethical is as ethical does and speaks. LANGUAGE MAKES US HUMAN AND IS OUR GREATEST TOOL. The good artisan takes good care of her/his tools. We should take good care of our words.

Humpty Dumpty told Alice, "I pay my words every Saturday night. And they mean what I want them to mean."

Will you continue to act and speak like a silly Egg who fell off a walk and cracked up

Nuff said!