"Old people are useless" is a pejorative comment against elderly people.
Pejorative is a word or expression that indicates an unfavorable idea . The term comes from the verb pejorar, which refers to making or making something worse , according to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) .
However, it is important to also establish the etymological origin of the word in question. Specifically, it comes from the Latin word peiorare , which can be translated as "get worse" and which, in turn, emanates from the adjective peior , which is synonymous with "worse."
pejorative language
Pejorative language, in short, is that which has a negative purpose for what it is designated . It is a resource that allows you to refer in a derogatory way to someone or something. For example: "Nothing else could be expected from a Jew." This phrase, with strong discriminatory and anti-Semitic content, mentions being Jewish as something pejorative. This word does not contain any negative factor in itself, but it acquires a pejorative nuance in the context (in this case, it seems that only bad things can be expected from Jewish people).
Another example of pejorative language would be: “I'm not interested in hearing it. What solution can an old man offer me? . This phrase includes the term "old" instead of "elderly" , which is a way of disqualifying or disrespecting the person in question. On the other hand, the expression implies that an elderly person has nothing useful to say or contribute in a certain situation.
There are many terms and expressions that throughout history have been used with a marked pejorative meaning and still continue to maintain the same meaning in many cases. This would be the case, for example, of the word "red" that during the Spanish Civil War the national side used to refer to its opponent. Currently, many activists and political leaders on the right continue to use the term to refer in a derogatory way to those who are, ideologically speaking, at the opposite extreme to them.
The Jewish community is often the victim of pejorative sayings.
Loss of negative condition
It should be noted that some pejorative terms ended up losing their negative status. The Italian Giorgio Vasari ( 1511 – 1574 ) described the art of the Middle Ages as “Gothic” considering it typical of the Goths or barbarians.
The term barbarian even has a pejorative origin (the Greeks considered that barbarians were those who did not speak their language and could only babble it with sounds similar to bar-bar). Over time, Gothic came to be considered an artistic style without pejorative conditions.
The pejorative as derogatory
In addition to all of the above, it should be noted that along the same lines of pejorative, in the sense that something is negative or bad, there is also the derogatory term. And it is another language tool that we regularly use to form a word derived from another and give it a negative and even contemptuous meaning.
Specifically, what is done is to take any word and place a suffix on it to give it that derogatory, negative tone that we have mentioned. An example of this could be the following words: brat, chump, populace or slut. These are words that start from a specific term and that, when a suffix is added, become a totally contemptuous concept.