Other than normal

On second thoughts, this whole problem cd be solved bydeleting the word "normal" from the lexicon.It only came into the english language in its currentusage in the mid 19th century. Previously it referred toa carpenters' tool. Hard to believe, but for most of recordedhistory, noone found it necessary to go around saying thingslike "You're just not normal", and "Try acting normalfor once in your life!"Perhaps you cd start another column, "10 Words that havepassed their use-by date"Then bury them with full ceremonial honours in some lexical geniza...Judy Singer

On 11/25/98 10:17:30 AM, Barbara Wallraff wrote:
>Judy Singer, of Australia,
>writes: "We need a word for
>people whose bodies and/or
>minds have some slight flaw or
>impairment, and thus do not
>conform to our ideas of
>'normal,' and whose lives are
>made difficult by invidious
>comparisons with this norm.

The obvious negation is abnormal, but
that hardly seems gentle enough for your
stated purposes. Perhaps the very mild
"atypical" would serve for both bodily
and mental deviations from strict normality.
For mental distinctions, "eccentric" has
a sufficiently temperate feel.

=Mark

"Atypical" is quite nice for mental as well as physical qualities, it seems to me. It's just a wee bit sly, but not in a cruel way.

Like 'atypical'!People at the "high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum"ie people who lack social skills, but have no intellectualimpairments (aka nerds or geeks), have coined their own term"neurotypical" to replace "normal". I think this is a reactionto the way the word "normal" is not just a descriptive statefor a common way of being 'wired', but a moral imperative thateveryone feels pressured to emulate.I like the way "typical' carries the feeling of being one ofmany ways of being, even if it is the one with the greateststatistical frequency. Maybe we need a suffix that means both body and mind;to cover all cases: "corpotypical /ontotypical/ anthropotypicalOr maybe just typical ....

I'm partial to the word "disarrange": to upset the arrangement of. Could we not argue that normality is an arrangement(of features, of ideas, of abilities) that society has agreed upon as its standard. The "disarranged" are those who have had that arrangement upset, or who have themselves upset the arrangement.

Another word, a fictitious one, but one I particularly like is "disstandard." Standard is such a bland, impotent word, however frequent it's used. To be disstandard to me suggests the positive connotation that Ms. Singer was looking for.

In my opinion the main reason the word normal is so dangerous is that there are two meanings which are not commonly distinguished when one hears or uses the word: 1) commonplace or average, conforming to a norm, and 2) healthy. The trouble is that if we find ourselves being or doing like most people we may erroneously conclude that we are healthy. And that if we are different we must must be impaired. Huck Finn, for example, thought he was a very bad kid for helping Jim escape. In some places it is still normal to smoke. But nowhere is it healthy. This goes beyond the word, doesn't it?

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Topic:	Other than normal (1 of 1), Read 30 times
Conf:	Word Fugitives, with Barbara Wallraff
From:	Peter Casey (pcasey@chicago.us.mensa.org)
Date:	Monday, December 07, 1998 12:33 AM

Atypical is too mild, and does not suggest the negative aspect of this condition. I suggest "disnormal" because "dis" indicates negativity and difference, without being quantitative or terribly qualitative. "subnormal" or "supranormal" are too quantitative. They indicate a linear progression, where the desired word is not necessarily linear. The concept is negative, and could be less than, more than, or in parallel.