Talk:Grease monkey

Racist?

Can anyone provide a citation on the racist use of the term? I think maybe that's the result of confusing "grease monkey" with "greaser". I searched throuh a bunch of dictionaries, and MSN Encarta is the only dictionary that claims "grease monkey" is insulting:

an offensive term for a mechanic, especially one who works on motor vehicles or aircraft ( slang insult )

The Encarta defintion of "greaser", however, is censored, and includes the following:

3. U.S. ( taboo offensive ) Same as greaseball (sense 2)

And from the similarly censored "greaseball":

2. U.S. taboo term: a highly offensive term for somebody of Mediterranean or Latin American, especially Mexican, origin ( taboo ) ( slang )

I'm going to yank the racist meaning from the article; feel free to put it back if verification can be found of that use. scot 15:55, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If it's saying anything: I first saw the term applied to a cliche car-obsessed mechanic in a Garfield book, so I strongly doubt the racist element unless you take out of historical context. --Bobak 19:41, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Expand, merge or redirect

This page is a mere dictionary definition (something which Wikipedia is not). It explains the meaning and alleged eytmologies of a slang expression and mentions some possibly-related phrases. While there is some interesting content here, I can't find any encyclopedic content on this page. Nothing here rises past what I would expect to read in a truly great unabridged dictionary. The definitions and usage discussions belong over in Wiktionary where folks with the right skills, interests and lexical tools can more easily sort out the meanings and origins.

Options to fix the page here include:

Expand the page with encyclopedic content - that is, content that goes well beyond the merely lexical.
Redirect the page to a more general page on the appropriate sub-genre of slang.
Replace the current contents with a soft-redirect to Wiktionary (usually done using the {{wi}} template).
Cut the lexical content down to the amount that would be appropriate at the top of a disambiguation page.

Given the other potential meanings of the link, I'm implementing option 4 for now. Rossami (talk) 23:01, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Whoever writes the entry for grease monkey aka mechanic slang

The grease discussion above is one thing, but don't forget about the monkey part, too. What's its etymology? Both are probably not so flattering. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.108.81.149 (talk) 01:43, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]