"politically correct"
(Phrase Origins)MWCD10 (1993) dates this expression 1983. But Merriam-Webster has since discovered a much earlier use, in H. V. Morton's _In the Steps of St. Paul_ (1936). The passage reads: "To use such words would have been equivalent to calling his audience 'slaves and robbers'. But 'Galatians', a term that was politically correct, embraced everyone under Roman rule, from the aristocrat in Antioch to the little slave girl in Iconium." Jesse Sheidlower of Random House sent me this citation from the U.S. Supreme Court decision Chisholm v. Georgia (1793): "The states, rather than the People, for whose sakes the States exist, are frequently the objects which attract and arrest our principal attention [...]. Sentiments and expressions of this inaccurate kind prevail in our common, even in our convivial, language. Is a toast asked? 'The United States,' instead of the 'People of the United States,' is the toast given. This is not politically correct."
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