STICKS AND STONES

In 1998, it was the N-word. Will 1999 be the year of the F-word?

“Fruit.” “Fag.” “Fairy.” According to Merriam-Webster’s thesaurus, they’re all other words for “homosexual.”

When the list appeared in America Online’s version of the thesaurus earlier this month--along with related words and synonyms such as “uranian” and “queer,” among others--gay rights leaders weren’t the only ones who gasped in horror.

Not that they hadn’t heard the words before (although “uranian” sounded more like a traveler from a faraway planet than a person of a certain sexual orientation), but it was shocking to see such words offered up for reference without warnings that their use might be, as dictionary editors like to say, socially inappropriate.

Words, even without context, can wound, enrage, shame and scorn. They can also segregate, denigrate and castigate entire ethnic, religious and racial groups. That was the basis for the outcry last year over Merriam-Webster’s definition of the word “nigger” as, simply, a “black person.”

The N-word, argued those demanding a different entry, doesn’t define a person at all; it is a derogatory term--an epithet, not a noun.

With Merriam-Webster’s pledge last week to review its synonym list for “homosexual,” words disparaging people of a certain sexual orientation have been added to the hit list of definitions that need warning labels if they are going to stay in print.

Carl Sandburg once described slang as a language “that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.”

But when slang expressions become tools of prejudice and hate, as have hundreds of derogatory American words and phrases, should they be protected?

For Carolivia Herron, who is African American and an associate English professor at Cal State Chico, the answer is not as obvious as it might seem. “I personally can’t get past the word ‘nigger’ no matter who is saying it. I know many African Americans use it easily to one another, but I don’t. It’s just too hurtful.”

Herron recently found herself at the center of a different semantic controversy over her children’s book “Nappy Hair.” The book, which has been recommended by the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University, tells of an African American girl’s emotional journey of self-acceptance, finally celebrating the uniqueness of her God-given features--”screwed up, squeezed up, knotted up” hair included.

The book stirred tensions in a predominantly black and Latino Brooklyn, N.Y., school district when a third-grade teacher, who is white, was accused by some parents of racial insensitivity for using the book in class. When she wrote the rap-rhythmed book, Herron says she discovered that her publisher had never heard the word “nappy.”

“It’s a word that makes African Americans angry. Not that whites are not allowed to say it and blacks can--it’s not like ‘nigger,’ ” says Herron. “It’s a black-on-black insult.” But Herron never meant to offend. Rather, she says, it was offered as a lesson in self-esteem.

The debate over who can use certain inflammatory words with impunity still flares up in some gay communities when the word “queer” is mentioned.

Although the term is generally considered pejorative, its appropriation by gay activists at the height of the AIDS epidemic gave it a certain social acceptability. Protesters with the militant group ACT UP made their battle cry “We’re here! We’re queer! Get used to it!”

“By doing that, they took back a derogatory term and used it to empower a whole movement,” says Scott Seomin, media director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. “It was their way of getting in your face, of saying, ‘You can’t ignore us.’ ”

The “taking back” of the word “queer” is still a hot issue. When an older colleague recently called from New York asking for some phone numbers, Seomin, 33, was startled when the ACT UP veteran asked, “Do you have a queer press list?”

“I wouldn’t have noticed if he had asked me for my gay press list, but the Q-word--controversial still--kinda woke me up. A lot of people really don’t like it.”

“In interpreting language,” says USC sociolinguist Ed Finegan, “context is critical. Language isn’t limited like a coin to two sides--the obvious ones of expression and meaning. Language is more like a triangle, with context at the base of the whole enterprise.”

But as society becomes more sensitive to our fast-changing racial, religious, sexual and ethnic makeup, some words will continue to shock in any context--and it is that group of words that are most troublesome for authors, educators and thesaurus editors.

Some books by William Faulkner have been gathering dust for decades because of some teachers’ discomfort with their use of racial slang.

Professor Herron recalls how she handled playing the part of the “nigger Jim” in a student performance of “Huck Finn” when she was in college. “I would do a couple scenes and then I’d stop and give a little talk about the use of the word,” says Herron, who also recalls being in a class studying Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” when the Jewish students demanded a Jewish teacher. “The white teacher had to sit down because she wasn’t Jewish and when we got to the actual content of the play, the Jewish students could get to the profundity of the content. Words carry different meanings for different people and I think it’s important to recognize their cultural history.”

But such accommodations are unusual in public schools in the ‘90s. A federal appeals court in October rejected a black woman’s request to remove “Huckleberry Finn” and Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” from the required reading list for ninth-graders at her daughter’s Tempe, Ariz., high school.

Kathy Monteiro had sued the school district, charging that the assignment of those books with their multiple “nigger” references discriminated against black students by creating a racially hostile environment and encouraging whites’ harassment of black students.

Gay rights leaders welcome the inclusion of slurs against homosexuals into the language debate. “We’re the last frontier,” says Seomin. “Until now, the gay communities were not being heard because the great debate of nature versus nurture is still going on when it comes to sexual orientation.

“When an African American child is born, there is no question why that child is black. But there is still great debate about what causes a boy or a girl to grow up to be gay,” he says. “If it’s inherent, let’s treat it seriously. If it’s not, some say, there’s no need to deal with it.”

But is sexual orientation the last frontier? There is also debate surrounding the use of the word “handicapped.” Although many people with disabilities reject the word for conjuring the image of a beggar “cap in hand,” the true origin of the word is more obscure. While some dictionaries define “handicapped” as synonymous with “physically or mentally disabled,” no less an authority than the Oxford English Dictionary traces “handicapped” back to a game of chance, such as a horse race.

Language, say those who study it, is always leaky and imprecise, with no hard and fast controls.

Like many of those at the forefront of the debate over the N-word, many gay rights activists say they do not want to edit out of the English language all hurtful and incendiary synonyms for the word “homosexual.”

“Kids need to know that these words exist but that they are no longer used unless someone is being rude and disrespectful,” says Seomin.

For her part, Herron looks forward to the day when the battle of words will be history.

“I’m going to be teaching a story from ‘Star Trek’ next semester,” she says. “And there is a scene where Abe Lincoln shows up and thanks the black woman member of the crew. He calls her a Negress and then apologizes.

“She says those words don’t bother her anymore. Because this is utopia.”

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Times researchers Peg Eby-Jager and Maloy Moore contributed to this report.