r-word

The word retard or retarded, regarded as a vulgar or taboo word.

I recently spoke supporting a new name for the President's Committee on Mental Retardation. I suggested it be changed to "President's Committee for People with Developmental Disabilities."

The Tropic Thunder premiere presented a particularly strong opportunity for advocacy groups to make further progress on this front, because the R-word has played a major role in advance viral marketing for the prospective big-budget blockbuster.[…]

The word rape, regarded as a vulgar or taboo word.

"Updike can use the `R' word" (rape, he meant) "to describe the love-making (sic) of the two Brazilians and get away with it."

As the viewer of any after-school special can tell you, women shy away from the R word because they blame themselves.

The word redskin or redskins (including Redskins as a team name) regarded as a vulgar or taboo word.

For years, Native American Indian groups and a wide variety of knee-jerk liberal sympathizers, including me, your humble scrivener, have pointed fingers of shame, shame, shame at the R-word team.

“The r-word is no more acceptable to American Indians than the n-word is to blacks,” one woman stated succinctly in a recent Post letter to the editor […]

Any word beginning with r that is considered (often humorously) to be taboo in the given context.

Neither Mayor David N. Dinkins nor Mr. Cuomo, though, has been reluctant to invoke the symbolism of another R-word: Republican.

In the second year of a three-year contract, Boggs will be 36 on June 15, but he's not ready to consider the R word—retirement.

To rape.

Alternative letter-case form of r-word.