What is "political correctness"

n. 1 (context uncountable English) Avoidance of expressions or actions that can be perceived to exclude, marginalize or insult people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against. 2 (context countable English) The result or product of being politically correct.

n. avoidance of expressions or actions that can be perceived to exclude or marginalize or insult people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against [syn: political correctitude] [ant: political incorrectness]

Political correctness (adjectivally: politically correct), commonly abbreviated to PC, is a term that, in modern usage, is used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended not to offend or disadvantage any particular group of people in society. In the media, the term is generally used as a pejorative, implying that these policies are excessive.

The term had only scattered usage before the early 1990s, usually as an ironic self-description, but entered more mainstream usage in the United States when it was the subject of a series of articles in The New York Times. The phrase was widely used in the debate about Allan Bloom's 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind, and gained further currency in response to Roger Kimball's Tenured Radicals (1990), and conservative author Dinesh D'Souza's 1991 book Illiberal Education, in which he condemned what he saw as liberal efforts to advance self-victimization, multiculturalism through language, affirmative action, and changes to the content of school and university curricula.

Commentators on the left have said that conservatives pushed the term in order to divert attention from more substantive matters of discrimination and as part of a broader culture war against liberalism. They also argue that conservatives have their own forms of political correctness, which are generally ignored by conservative commenters.