Meme Context: “gimp” in english is a strong derogative slur for disabled people. People complain about the program name regularly as it makes hard to push for it both publicly (seen as silly) as well as within companies (seen as unprofessional and silly). The maintainer however believes they can redefine a 100 year old slur all on their own. Lower text “answers” inspired by this.
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a strong derogative slur for disabled people
Oh for fuck’s sake OP. I have never in life heard gimp used that way. One might be limping a bit and say, “My hurt leg’s still a little gimpy.” If one were back in time by several decades.
Where are you from? This isn’t a thing in America.
I’ve only ever thought of it like a gimp suit. The slur never occurred to me. I’m dirty but kind.
Same, I always think of CJ from GTA:SA because of the gimp suit mission. Heard about the other definition later when I could actually speak english a little bit more (age restrictions never worked, lol).
Make your own app if you don’t like it.
There is the other meaning, too. Not a slur, but also not safe either.
And there was this art from 2.7.2:
nsfw
deleted by creator
A disabled person
Turns out its a slur for someone with a disability usually legs.
It’s a old slur for disabled people.
But nobody uses it that way.
Not as a noun, but it’s occasionally used as a verb in the sense of “crippled” or “restricted”.
To be honest, I’ve been using GIMP for more than 10 years before I learned of the slur.
Similarly, git.
Git is just a cowboy saying get. As in git out, or git gud.
I don’t know if you’re sarcastic or don’t know, and either way it doesn’t matter. Here’s the README from the first commit in git:
"git" can mean anything, depending on your mood. - random three-letter combination that is pronounceable, and not actually used by any common UNIX command. The fact that it is a mispronounciation of "get" may or may not be relevant. - stupid. contemptible and despicable. simple. Take your pick from the dictionary of slang. - "global information tracker": you're in a good mood, and it actually works for you. Angels sing, and a light suddenly fills the room. - "goddamn idiotic truckload of sh*t": when it breaksOutta here with that yankee shite, ya git.
English is just one language of many. Would you change it if it was a slur in french?
They have a town called Condom. That was funny enough so I stopped looking, there may be better.
Bitche, please ==> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitche
Screenshot from https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/fucking-austria because they’ve changed the spelling to “Fugging” after the village got famous.
You left out the funniest part about it being internet famous.
Tourist goblins kept stealing the sign!
Of course not. As the merovingian in the matrix says. French is a fantastic language, especially to curse with.
Well, we pronounce GA-nome, maybe be start pronouncing it with the soft g, like in gif.
I have never heard gimp in any context that would suggest it’s a slur
Then you never watched Pulp Fiction.
The Stig was originally going to be called The Gimp but the BBC didn’t approve.
So they should rename it STIG which stands for So This Is Gimp
My opinion as a user:
I don’t personally care. I don’t necessarily see GIMP as being a slur at all, since to me it’s more related to a completely consentual sex thing than to something a person has no control over. It’s not called “R-word” or anything like that. If a person wants to be a gimp, more power to 'em. Let their freak flag fly, I say. And I’m not aware of the other use being at all common anymore, having been replaced with other more modern slurs.
However, in the matter of optics, sure, it still comes off as a little odd, possibly immature, etc… But the argument that “No body wants a name change” actually does hold some merit because GIMP is completely open source. There is nothing stopping people from forking it and releasing it with a new name, and even though this has been done (Glimpse) nobody jumps ship to this new, more maturely named alternative that is exactly the same. They stay on GIMP. Why…because no one really cares. We’re all mature enough to say “haha…stupid name” and then move on with our lives without getting into a huff about every little thing.
and even though this has been done (Glimpse) nobody jumps ship to this new, more maturely named alternative that is exactly the same. They stay on GIMP
Well, the Glimpse project didn’t do the boring thing and just rebrand GIMP, they had more ideas and not enough people to work on them so they failed pretty quickly. If a simple rebrand would be used more than the original still remains to be proven, though it not existing might also be taken as indication that the demand for “GIMP with another name” isn’t there.
TBH I never associated it with a slur.
The fetish however…
yeah I thought it was a fetish thing
Language changes through use, not through rules or intentions to “preserve” meanings. You can’t freeze a language, words evolve based on how people actually use them, and today GIMP overwhelmingly refers to the image editing software, not some outdated insult. If you search for it online, you’ll find pages of tutorials and plugins long before you even stumble on that old sense.
English is a global language now, the majority of its speakers aren’t native, and it feels ethnocentric to assume everyone experiences a word the same way a small educated group of native speakers might. Meaning comes from context and community use, not from etymology.
Semantic shifts and reappropriations happen all the time. Words like “queer” completely changed meaning over time. From my point of view, GIMP has done the same thing.
Sorry if I miss some nuance, I’m not a native speaker myself…
They want to keep it because it’s a double recursive acronym, GNU Image Manipulation Program, where “GNU” translates to “GNU’s Not UNIX.”
So clever.
It’s 2026. Can we please change the name to something NOT juvenile?
I think it’s worth keeping the name so that people searching for dodgy bondage suits get a chance to download some quality image processing software by mistake.
