Lykourgos wrote:QUOTE (Lykourgos @ Aug 4 2006, 01:40 AM) If we took and removed every term ever "often used in a negative way", what would happen?
In fact some lingual phenomenon akin to this takes place everyday,
It is called euphemism treadmill and causes once neutral or positive words to be connected to a negative meaning. (lets not forget that Idiot and Moron, were once neutral and scientific terms, then some people used them in a negative way and the treadmill began to work.)
That is why I mentioned the intention of the offender, as using a good intention is the only way this vicious cycle can be broken.
Thats why I said clear positive way, if we want to use voob we should first suceed at redeeming the word.
One cannot simply use negative words in a positive way even if one has a positive intent. For example if I were trying to flatter a girl and were to say: "You dirty BITCH!".
Then it cannot be expected that this girl would be flattered. Most likely she would be insulted.
(Of course I could explain then that a dirty bitch is in my mind a sex-positive openminded attractive young woman that does not refrain from using vulgar speech during the act to further the experienced stimuli. But without that explanation it would be an insult. And my bet is that she is still insulted after you explained.)
So if we were to give Voob a real image boost I could certainly agree on using it.
But taking into consideration that this word never had a positive meaning and was invented by veterans to designate a certain playergroup (indicating lower skill) I would not count on it gaining a positive meaning.