CGVT
Senior Member
Part of the problem is that it's a double negative. "Respect me. I'm a grown assed man" is how that sentence logically should be phrased, using the formal definition of disrespect.
When used like in your example, it's not just poor phrasing or verbing a noun, there's a shift in the meaning. "Don't disrespect me" is much more specific, it's more like saying, "Don't mock me." It doesn't really mean "Hold me in a feeling of deep admiration," which is the dictionary definition of "Respect me."
Also, http://xkcd.com/37/
Yep
So respect can be a noun or a verb. I don't think the validity of respect as a verb in a sentence like, "I respect him" has anything to do with a change in times. It works whether used in 1952 or 2013.
As I said in my edit (which you happened to leave out of the quote box), respect is a noun or a verb, but in the past was more common as a noun
But we are not talking about the word respect. We are talking about the word disrespect. In keeping with the thread title, disrespect is a word or phrase that I hate.
And the reemergence of the word disrespect is a fairly recent phenomenon.
It has everything to do with the change of the times.