Name Change is in Order

[Humerox]

The funniest part about all this is that Aruden is just trying to grief a guild.

To the argument itself, the word "holocaust" is not offensive; it wasn't even used in common parlance (in referring to the Jewish genocide) until after 1978, when the TV miniseries Holocaust used the word to describe what happened to the Jews.

"Holocaust" had a significant secular history prior to its employment as a referent to the Nazi Judeocide. You attempt to leave the impression that "holocaust" had absolutely no secular history before it became the principal American-English referent to the Nazi mass murder of Jews.

Many works have been written that use "Holocaust" outside of your definition:

The Young Turks and the Truth about the Holocaust at Adna (1913 -- massacre of Armenians in 1909.)

The Holocaust and Other Poems (1914 -- "Holocaust" in this title refers to the San Francisco earthquake and fire.)

The Holocaust in Minnesota (1918 -- great forest fire.)

Some examples after WW2:

Holocaust at Sea (1956 -- account of a 1942 naval battle, the sinking of the battleship Scharnhorst.)

World Law or World Holocaust (1957 -- address before the Oklahoma Bar Association.)

Holocaust! (1959 -- account of a 1942 fire. A newspaper headline description: "Boston Fire Death Toll 440; Night Club Holocaust Laid to Bus Boy's Lighted Match" -- New York Times 30 November 1942, p. 1.)

I could add many more, but you get my point. Your narrow defenition of the word and its history is ignorant, and your attempt to force that narrow definition on everyone here is offensive.