I read this over breakfast, and thoroughly enjoyed it. (And found it quite useful.)
It sparked a thought of the push in 1984 to make a smaller dictionary, flattening out the language. Have you noticed any of that in general discourse? My thesaurus (and dictionary) not only helps me write, but it helps me think. I like the old ones, too. There's a 1973 printing of The Oxford English Dictionary on my shelf. It's one of those two-volume tiny print ones, jam packed with words. I wonder if a gradual movement away from nuance is an eternal trend, and endless inertia to fight. Comparing the First edition of Webster's Dictionary (1951) and the Eleventh Merriam-Webster's (2003), "Interminable" examples move from endless suffering, to "a sermon."
Right, language does evolve over time and can mean different things in different eras. Such as "nice", for example. Did you know it used to mean "foolish"? Another example is "gay" which used to mean meaning happy (remembering the Flinstones song). But aside from meaning changes, sometimes, words are used specifically to distort or damage discourse in general, which we'd all be better off not engaging in, or repeating in our speech. It's better to refer to challenges in the positive, such as replacing fight, and war with something different, such as peace advocate, instead of anti-war activist. (I wrote about that in another article entitled, Pro Peace over Anti War).
I read this over breakfast, and thoroughly enjoyed it. (And found it quite useful.)
It sparked a thought of the push in 1984 to make a smaller dictionary, flattening out the language. Have you noticed any of that in general discourse? My thesaurus (and dictionary) not only helps me write, but it helps me think. I like the old ones, too. There's a 1973 printing of The Oxford English Dictionary on my shelf. It's one of those two-volume tiny print ones, jam packed with words. I wonder if a gradual movement away from nuance is an eternal trend, and endless inertia to fight. Comparing the First edition of Webster's Dictionary (1951) and the Eleventh Merriam-Webster's (2003), "Interminable" examples move from endless suffering, to "a sermon."
Right, language does evolve over time and can mean different things in different eras. Such as "nice", for example. Did you know it used to mean "foolish"? Another example is "gay" which used to mean meaning happy (remembering the Flinstones song). But aside from meaning changes, sometimes, words are used specifically to distort or damage discourse in general, which we'd all be better off not engaging in, or repeating in our speech. It's better to refer to challenges in the positive, such as replacing fight, and war with something different, such as peace advocate, instead of anti-war activist. (I wrote about that in another article entitled, Pro Peace over Anti War).
I remember learning about this during some err...community organizing training in another life. The name is important.