or hard-of-hearing person. Capital D-Deaf is as stated prior, is referred to as a student who first identifies as that. Lower case d-deaf is where a person has hearing loss: typically, those that consider themselves deaf, first and foremost prior to any other identity. Hearing-impaired and hard-of-hearing Hearing people may use the term hearing-impaired, perhaps thinking it is more polite than deaf, but Deaf people tend to reject it, for a variety of reasons. It is more likely to be used for people with a mild or moderate hearing loss or for people who have acquired deafness in adulthood rather than by those who have grown up Deaf. By contrast, those who identify with the Deaf culture movement typically reject the label hearing-impaired and other labels that imply that deafness is a pathological condition, viewing it instead as a focus of pride. Further, the term focuses entirely on the physical condition of deafness, while ignoring the linguistic and cultural distinction between those who sign and identify with Deaf culture, and those who do not. The term hard-of-hearing is preferred over hearing-impaired within the American Deaf community and accepted as a neutral term without negative or pathological connotations, with no implication about age of onset. It generally refers to people who depend primarily on a spoken language for communication or who have mild or moderate hearing loss. An ASL term exists and is roughly equivalent to the English term. Deprecated terms: deaf-mute and deaf and dumb Various terms once used to refer to the deaf are no longer used and may be viewed either as out-of-date, or an insult, such as deaf-mute, or deaf and dumb. Formerly these terms were neutral, or at least accepted, as can be seen by nicknames such as baseball player Dummy Hoy, or the former names of educational institutions, since renamed, such as Pennsylvania School for the Deaf (formerly Pennsylvania Institute for the Deaf and Dumb), Gallaudet University (formerly National Deaf-Mute College). Deaf-mute is a literal translation of the French which was already in use in France in the 19th century, in the works of the founder of the deaf school in Paris, as well as in the name of the school, the Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets à Paris. Since some Deaf people can also speak, the term deaf-mute is not accurate. The word dumb had meant 'speechless' for centuries in English before it gained the