Has been changed into a slur. In my lifetime retard was no more a slur than to say someone had polio, it was a medical diagnosis. One of my grade school friends had a brother who was retarded. No one treated him badly, we accepted him for who he was. In fact his brother had an incredible sense of humor, we loved laughing with him. Maybe not common everywhere, but it was just a description to us, not a slur.
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