I saw some slackjaw complaining about the phrase “hitting on” being a violent phrase.
No.
“Hitting on” is an example of idiomatic drift, from the idea of a lucky “hit,” that is, finding or getting something by chance or luck. The drift in this case is from the happenstance and serendipity of locating a desired person to the actions associated therewith.
By the way, the original meaning of “hit” back in the mists of linguistic time was something like “to meet with.” It’s only later that it became associated with the act of physically striking someone or something.
I wish people would fucking read. Study history. Know something rather than nothing.
But the historical roots don’t fully encompass its meaning and use now.
True, but does the phrase have violent connotations do you? It doesn’t to me.
I don’t see the wisdom of purging all words that somehow connote violence from the language. Not that anyone has suggested that, really, but language purges tend to reduce the possibilities of expression and don’t seem to do much to curb bad thoughts until they, uh, hit the extreme Orwellian limit.
And given the misogyny and violence of our culture and humanity in general, it’s likely any replacement phrase will come to connote to some people the exact thing the old phrase was binned for connoting.
You can change language by changing culture, but it’s a much harder task to change culture by changing language, IMO.