In 1994, Hunter S. Thompson wrote some of the choicest words ever included in an obituary. Richard Nixon “was a swine of a man,” Thompson wrote. “His body should have been burned in a trash bin.” He was not reluctant about maligning the dead. “I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly, long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.”

That, I think you’ll agree it is fair to say, is dehumanizing language. But while our time is full of fear and loathing, it is not one that would suit Thompson’s raucous sensibility about how and when to throw words around. Our ideas about what counts as an insult have gotten more precious — and not by 10% but by probably 10,000%. Exempli gratia: The World Health Organization has moved on from worrying about an “infodemic” (as I noted here last week) and has started to raise the alarm that we may be using “dehumanizing” words. It tweeted this absurd advice: