Talk about a couple of negative words! The nouns in today’s title suggest unfairness, bigotry, racism even. It wasn’t always that way. It isn’t always that way now.

Awhile ago I got sued. It wasn’t fair, but the wheels of the legal system rotate slowly, so it was two years and tens of thousands of dollars before it went away.

The complaint against me and my business was “dismissed with prejudice.” I remember liking the first word but stumbling over the last. Until my lawyer/friend/client explained it to me. “That means old Ed can never bring the case again,” Bruce said. “It’s been judged already, and found wanting.”

Whoa, I remember thinking: cool.

As for discrimination, it isn’t always followed by the word “against.” In fact, discrimination means the ability to make fine distinctions. Dis is from the Latin for “apart,” and crimen meant “verdict.” (Crimen is also “accusation,” from which we get “crime,” all from cernere, which hailed from the Greek krinein: to decide, judge).

So prejudice and discrimination are both about judging – the first beforehand and the second between – and it would be nice, precisely nice, to continue the possibility of using them in the neutral or positive sense.