Talk:sicko

RFV discussion: July–August 2019

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sicko

I'll just quote what I said in the Tea Room:

"I have always taken sense two and sense three to be the same in practice. I'm not sure how one could adequately distinguish them.

Perhaps usage notes are warranted here to explain the commonly found link between senses two and three?

In my experience, if someone calls some person with unpleasant tastes, views or habits a sicko, there is often the implication that there is something off about the person being called that."

-sche suggested a shift in venue. And here we are; presto changeo.

Can we figure out how best to define this term, and how many senses it actually has? Tharthan (talk) 04:27, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Note -sche pointed out that "a mentally ill person" might merely be depressed etc. rather than "sick" (perverted, murderous, or whatever). Equinox ◑ 04:33, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

In my opinion the main sense, when applied to a person, is someone who vents ideas, or displays behaviour, that is considered sick (“morally repugnant”, “perverted”, ..., rather than “ill”). Telling someone they are a sicko is basically the same as saying, “you are sick, bro!” It is tempting to ascribe this to a mental condition, and so calling someone a “sicko” may imply the application of a layman’s psychiatric diagnosis. However, I am not familiar with use of the term in a more general sense of being mentally ill, also in a non-revolting way.  --Lambiam 10:57, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

I meant to mention this earlier, but including perversion in that definition actually does open the door to public perception of mental illness. Think about it. I truly wonder how much the general public would distinguish "You are sick" = "You are icky and/or think icky things" and "You are sick" = "There is something wrong with you".

I honestly think that, outside of certain particular circumstances, the distinction is not always obvious. And, in fact, whether a specific something that is considered "icky" rises to the level of "something disgusting that is caused by something mentally wrong in the person thinking it" varies from person to person when it comes to perception.

Unless every citation has "...and there has to be something mentally wrong with them" following the use of "sicko", how are we to be sure which "sense" (more accurately, I think, nuance) is meant? Tharthan (talk) 15:17, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, as I mentioned in the Tea Room, I think it comes down to whether it's ever used with reference to just the "ill" sense of "sick" (like contrasting a depressed "sick-o" with a "well-o" or something), or whether the suggestion is simply that "disgusting/repugnant/perverted" people are mentally ill or vice versa, which isn't a separate sense (IMO). I can find some citations where the former might be the case, but it's hard to be sure. Consider:

• 2014, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (→ISBN), page 317:

  Every so often, I find myself with the urge to make sure people know that I am not just on Prozac but on lithium too, that I am a real sicko, a depressive of a much higher order than all these happy-pill poppers with their low-level sorrow.

• 2004, Laurie Notaro, I Love Everybody, and Other Atrocious Lies: True Tales of a Loudmouth Girl, Villard Books (→ISBN), page 141:

  It's true, my mother swears up and down, that the purple, clinically depressed four-legged creature handled her. [...But] the only violence she could summon up against Eeyore was a disgusted look [...and] she said [...] 'You know, you're weird in the videos I've seen, and I don't care how sad you are because nothing goes your way, you're a sicko! A sicko! you know that? That's why things don't ever work out for you, you friggin' sick donkey!'

• 2003, Adbusters:

  So come on, doc, precisely which kind of sicko is America? You might plump for depressed (isolationist), psychopathic (lack of empathy) or even psychotic (barking mad - what P.G. Wodehouse referred to as "thinking you're a poached egg").

Wurtzel (2014) could well just be using it to mean "sick/ill", but with Notaro (2004) it's less clear, as she seems to be expressing that Eeyore is repugnant to her. - -sche (discuss) 18:26, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Btw, we might be missing an adjective sense, though I'm not entirely convinced it isn't a recurring typo ("was sicko" as an error for "was a sicko", etc): see Citations:sicko. - -sche (discuss) 18:49, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

As I said earlier, if we are unable to come to a definitive answer, would usage notes be helpful? Tharthan (talk) 19:44, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Applied to a person, a sicko is a person who is sick in some sense. All senses and nuances of sicko should correspond to colloquial senses and nuances found for the adjective. Note that this includes “mentally unstable, disturbed” as well as “in bad taste". If usage notes can help, perhaps the adjective is the first place – IMO these adjectival senses are connected, with “perverse” as a bridge.  --Lambiam 21:38, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

I've gotta say in most instances I think usage notes are an absolute last-instance emergency. I also think that the modern "psychiatric establishment" is mostly a corporate lie that tries to sell us drugs and tell us that depression is a disease, and not normal everyday sadness. You draw your own conclusions. Let's try to be neutral. Equinox ◑ 02:41, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

The bigwigs in the psych fields are causing a whole lot of trouble for a whole lot of people these days, I agree. They seem to be returning to some mutated Freudian approach towards psych when it comes to the way that they look at things. Some would argue that it is precisely the opposite, but I'm pretty convinced that that is what is going on, and I say that that is a bad thing for the psych fields as a whole. However, I'm not sure that I agree precisely with your analysis of depression.

If you think that usage notes really ought to only be used in an absolute emergency, then we probably ought to ditch definition three and reword/add on to definition 2. There is a nuance that is not touched upon in our current entry as it is. Usage notes saying something along the lines of "For definition 2, a connotation of offness [or however you want to word it. "instability" sounds more off-putting to me, hence why I don't suggest it unless others think that it works better] is often present" or something would solve this, but if you think that it is best that we not do that, then perhaps we ought to do something else. Definitions 2 and 3 as they currently stand are somewhat nebulous. Tharthan (talk) 06:23, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I think these two senses should be collapsed into one. This word (originally US) is defined by Green as "a mentally unstable person, with overtones of sexual perversion" and in the New Partridge as "an emotionally or psycho-sexually disturbed person", while Lambert (2004) defines it as "a disturbingly depraved person". I can find no evidence that it means some who is simply mentally ill (e.g. with dementia, infantilism, schizophrenia, depression, etc.). I think "a mentally ill person" is just a poorly worded definition. As for the "person with unpleasant tastes, views or habits" - this corresponds with the defs of other slang lexicographers, but again is poorly worded (i.e. too mealy-mouthed). -Sonofcawdrey (talk) 09:19, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

BTW - I have RFV'd def 1 - the supposed Australian slang for a "day taken off work due to (possibly exaggerated or supposed) illness" - this is a sickie in Australia, not a "sicko" (unless of course cites proving me wrong can be found) - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 09:22, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

In trying to cite the Australian "sick day" sense, I found this citation which seems to mean "a person who is sick" in the sense of physically ill:

• 1993, Weekly World News, page 5:

  The amazing Mr. Sick Day [Milo Filbum] has missed an amazing 73% of 1,020 work days for such ailments as a toothache, [...] "I finally gave the sicko his walking papers when other people started doing the same thing — calling in sick and all," the manager [said] ...

Perhaps if there are other citations like that, the sense could be changed from "...who is mentally ill" to something like "...who is (mentally or physically) ill". But such usage seems rare and nonstandard. - -sche (discuss) 00:52, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Kiwima has done a great job citing the "physically ill person" sense. Some of the citations currently under the "mentally ill person" sense are not so clear: the citation about a "lesbian sicko" seems likely to be engaging in / referring to the long practice of calling gay people perverts (and 'mentally ill" in the same way you might call a criminal who flayed someone a sicko and psycho), and the "gambler" could just be "a person with unpleasant tastes, views or habits", although that may be more due to deficiency in our definition #2. There do seem to be enough sitations to support the sense, but I wonder a) if it should be marked as uncommon or nonstandard in some way, since usually the other sense ("pervert") is the one that would be understood if you called someone a "sicko", and b) if perhaps the "mentally ill" and "physically ill" senses should be combined, or made subsenses of a "person who is ill" sense. - -sche (discuss) 15:16, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Again:

"In my experience, if someone calls some person with unpleasant tastes, views or habits a sicko, there is often the implication that there is something off about the person being called that."

I still am not sure how one can argue that there is always a clear distinction between these two senses. Tharthan (talk) 04:11, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

RFV-resolved Kiwima (talk) 23:28, 23 August 2019 (UTC)