Why Do Some Take Such Offense...

[Peter Crowe]

I think Anne has hot the nail on the head. Not everyone calling a kilt a skirt has the same intent, and it is foolish to get upset by someone who never intended to offend you. Probably it is still rather foolish even if they did, but those are still two rather different situations. I like the comment about a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent, and that is certainly what the second situation can become, if not something even worse.

Also, as she said, it is perfectly correct English usage to refer to a kilt as a skirt, but that brings us back to intent. If you know it is more specifically a kilt, and perhaps that calling it a skirt will offend some people (although not me), then why would you do so? Perhaps to annoy?

On one occasion a lady told me she liked my skirt, I thanked her, and only then she apologised for calling it that, implying that she had only just remembered that it was called a kilt. Clearly she had no intention of saying the wrong thing. If a man said it I would be more suspicious, but that has never happened to me (yet). I am not one to turn down a compliment from a lady, especially not based on something as trivial as terminology.

I think you may have hit the nail on the head here, and it pretty much agrees with what some of us have said in the course of this discussion. After re-reading your post with Anne's included, I re-examined the use of language, and you are right that in both the English (OED) and American (MWD) dictionaries the word kilt is invariably described as a type of skirt.

I then checked my trusty Chambers Scots Dictionary (published 1911, Edinburgh, 1986 reprint-no ISBN number) for the definition of kilt, and their were six entries not one of which used the word skirt. The definition for the garment is: Kilt, n. a Hebridean name for home-made garment of any or no colour., Cf Kelt

Therefore, whatever may be the understanding in the rest of the English speaking world, it is not that of people from Scotland who speak Scottish Standard English (SSE), Scots, or Gaelic (or any combination thereof). Confusion and misunderstanding often occurs when people speak and understand different idioms of the same language (SSE) or in the case of Scots, a closely related language to English.

If you grow up with one understanding of a term, and someone else has another you can see how offence may be given or taken. However, As Father Bill stated earlier in the thread, feeling offended is an emotional reaction not a rational (intellectual) one. It can therefore not be considered foolish in and of itself. How one reacts to feelings of being offended can undoubtedly lead to behaviour which on mature reflection we might consider to have been folly. However, to call a person so circumstanced foolish is harsh in the extreme (because you are implicitly calling them a fool). If we are honest, have we not all been less than our wisest best selves on occasion?