Right, but people don’t quite seem to work that way.

The point I was trying to make was is there, in fact, a point at which language drift DOES cause a word to stop being offensive.

For example, prat, as in pratfall, now means a clumsy and somewhat foolish person (in the UK), but there are a lot of people with the surname Pratt. When surnames were being finalized, “prat” actually meant a clever person who made their money with their brain. So that’s a word which went from compliment to insult. As did coward, which originally just meant somebody who takes care of cows (cow-herd).

It’s harder to find examples that go the other way, but here’s one.

Geek.

While high school jocks might still use this as an insult, the common definition of “geek” nowadays is “computer expert.” Calling somebody a geek is generally a compliment.

Geek, at one point, meant the star of a carnival freak show…