It's not "abused," but it poorly used in translation: the word "pogrom." Anglophones seem to think it means violence against Jews. No. (Caveat: I know the word is now an English word and has detached from its original meaning, but it still annoys me.) The Russian word "pogrom" means any kind of bottom-up violence, irrespective of reason or target. The anti-Jewish violence in Russia in 1905, the Watts riots, anti-Black lynchings in the US South, the Arab young people attacking the French state recently are all pogroms. I spent the evening waling around Moscow with my ex-girlfriend, who just got back from a 3-month stay in Paris, and she talked about the student pogroms in France: "I saw the police put two pogromshchiki in the back of a car."
--- Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote: I am inclined to think that the term is one of those abused terms like "terrorism" that have been reduced to near meaninglessness through overuse.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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