To me "Goth" primarily means a person who is into a certain asthetic that might be loosely described as gothic. Typically they dress in black, especially black leather, and listen to a certain type of music, go to certain types of night clubs, etc. I've never heard the word used to mean a rude person.

Dear Alex: Your description of "gothic" sounds like a put-down. To bad "Gothic" does not
mean just the great Cathedrals.
Incidentally, I don't see how "Goth" is an eponym.

Flash- My encyclopedia says "Visigoth" is from Latin meaning "good Goths" My dictionary say it is
of uncertain origin. I had always heard it meant "West Goths".
Incidentally Jordanes called his ancestore "Getae".
What I ;have been ;unable to get any cl;ues about is what enabled them to become so numerous
and powerful. Could it have been the delayed acquisition of iron tools that enabled them to
create arable land and resulting increase in food supply?

I see no support for the "good Goth" hypothesis. Latin vis means power, strength. AHD traces the visi- back to the IE root wes- which gave us west and, in the extended form, wes-pero-, vespers.

I guess I'd only ever heard of "Goth" used as a modern description of (mostly young) people who are into things that many others would consider macabre or morbid. I had heard much earlier the term "visigoth" applied much the same as as someone might call another person a philistine.


The people who are not like us are bad.
One of several derogatory terms named after groups of bad people:

General terms:
Barbarian (My Greek bud says this came from the Greek habit of describing how non-Greeks spoke - "Bar Bar Bar" or as we might say today "blah blah blah". That is nonGreek was gibberish.)

Savage - apparently a bastardization of sylvaticus (from the woods)

Heathen - Infidel (unconverted person) but usually intimating hedonism or depravity of some sort -- maybe these terms don't belong in either of these groups.


For specific groups:
Vandal - the germanic tribe or a generic destroyer

Goth - germanic tribe and as per awad.

Philistine - ignorant, materialistic, or uncultured person or resident of philistia

Hun - conqueror or (well) a specific conquering nomadic tribe.

Spartan - not necessarily a negative connotation, I guess.

Mongol - person from mongolia or a person with down's syndrome (i think this term was "meant" to be descriptive and not intentionally derogatory.)

Cossack - is this one? I vaguely recall the term being used to describe a lower class soldier. I'm not sure.

(Interestingly "viking" doesn't have the negative connotation - at least in my own mind.)


Odd observation: the terms parochial (narrow, often blindly or ignorantly so) and catholic (universal or eclectic) are almost antonyms.


k

wwh: No it isn't a put-down. People who are into those things would gladly describe themselves as "goth." Personally, from little I truly understand of cultural history, they are a variant of Romantics. They do have a fascination with things that are considered macabre, like vampires, but they also have a fascination with things that are...what's the word for it?...kinda old fashioned in some way, in a way that turns its back a little on modern "convenience culture" like fast food and the general blandness of suburbia. I'm sure there is a lot of variety in this sub-culture, and you could find a goth reading Anne Rice novels, or the poems of Keats, or wearing leather pants to a dance club.

I work with a goth. He is quiet and polite and has a pickup truck with vanity plates that read ROSNANTE.

We're only allowed 8 characters on the vanity plates, else he would have spelled Rosinante correctly.