Choosing the wrong word

Mark Twain said that the difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

Here is a perfect example of using the wrong word to make your point. In a story about whether or not feeding someone ground glass will kill them, the author chooses to lead with these examples:

We humans have been making glass for over 3,500 years. The Ancient Egyptians were making and exporting glass from their factories to their neighbours in Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Cyprus and Crete. About 500 years ago, it was believed that if you ground up some valuable glass and fed it to an enemy, it would kill them. A few centuries later, the slave chronicles of pre-Civil War America refer to disgruntled black slaves who “poisoned masters and mistresses with arsenic, ground glass and ‘spiders beaten up in buttermilk’ ”. A popular device in Victorian literature had fictional characters using ground glass to surreptitiously kill off unwanted relatives. The “ground glass death” myth persists to this day. For example, it is claimed that unscrupulous manufacturers of ecstasy cut it with ground glass. But, as it says in Porgy and Bess, it ain’t necessarily so.

My jaw dropped as I read the bolded words. “Disgruntled”? Disgruntled? This “disgruntled”?

to put into a state of sulky dissatisfaction; make discontent.

This disgruntled?

displeased and discontented; sulky; peevish: Her disgruntled husband refused to join us.

This disgruntled?

in a state of sulky dissatisfaction

I’m sorry, but this author is an ass. And his editors are also asses. This is on the science website of the Australian Broadcasting Network, which supposedly has more editors and layers of proofreaders and fact-checkers than the entire blogosphere—and yet, they use an asinine word like “disgruntled” to describe African slaves who, gee, let’s think—didn’t like being slaves.

Here’s a link that cites the source “Dr. Karl” used in his quote. And here’s the main site about the many rebellions against slavery.

The mind simply reels at the ignorance of this author.

Disgruntled.

Moron.