Sean Barrett wrote:
"To retard" is a perfectly legitimate verb meaning "to hold back" or "to slow." Assuming that it refers to a psycological condition is every bit as ridiculous as assuming that "niggardly" has something to do with skin color.
Certainly not every bit! "niggardly" /never/ has anything to do with skin color. "retard" really can refer to a psychological condititon -- especially when it's a noun (as usernames typically are).
Here are the varios meanings of "retard" as a noun (from the OED): 1: "Retardation, delay." Example (1971): "The Government, somewhat in retard of the fact, enacted the..eugenic protection law in 1949." 2: "retard of the tide" 3: "A device in a motor vehicle for retarding the ignition spark." 4: "U.S. slang. A mentally retarded person."
Which is most likely? Certainly, we do not /know/, just as we didn't /know/ that "TMC" didn't mean a Godzilla-like 100-foot-tall, vibrating rooster. Heck, he even said that it /did/ mean that!
Not that this is directly relevant to anything, since as somebody (Ec?) mentioned before, [[User:Retard]] has banned the name for us already, by leaving some time ago, probably forever.
-- Toby