Funny Video Roomates One Speaks in Old English
Howard Richler: When good words go bad
Author Howard Richler explains the slow process through which everyday terms come to mean terrible things.
In the following book excerpt, author Howard Richler explains the slow process through which everyday terms come to mean terrible things:
Let us take it as settled: the meaning of words is dictated by popular usage, and words are always changing meanings through a variety of processes. The first of these is metaphor, which involves a change with the addition of meanings due to a semantic similarity or connection between the new sense and the original one. The change of "grasp" from "seize" to "understand" can be seen as a leap across semantic domains — from the physical sphere, "grasping," to a mental one, "comprehending." In the same way, when we refer to a person as a "rock" or a "pillar of the community," we are using the words in a metaphorical fashion.
Similarly, football adopted the term "blitz," a sudden massive military attack, to refer to a sudden charge into the offensive backfield by defensive players. The word "broadcast" originally meant "to cast seeds out," but with the advent of radio and television, the word was used metaphorically to refer to the transmission of audio and video signals. (In agricultural circles, the original sense of "broadcast" is still employed.) The word "magazine" originally referred to a storehouse (still prevalent to refer to ammunition), and the periodical sense of "magazine" sees the word as a storehouse of words and information. The word "myopia" surfaced in 1693 to refer to an inability to see distant objects clearly. By 1821, poet Charlotte Smith used it metaphorically in the phrase "myopia of the mind." Similarly, while "galaxy" may have had an astronomical birth, within centuries the word was being used to refer to any brilliant assemblage, such as a "galaxy" of movie stars.
Another method of change is generalization. For example, at one time the word "fabulous" meant resembling a fable; then it meant "incredible" because what is found in fables is incredible. Now it has weakened even more and you can use it to describe a particular dress that you like. "Awful" is another example. It originally meant "inspiring awe" but since what inspires awe isn't always so pleasant, it came to mean something negative. The original sense of awful — inspiring awe — doesn't even exist anymore (although you still understand its meaning when reading Milton's Paradise Lost). This process also works for nouns and verbs. Originally a "barn" was a place you stored barley; it was a compound of bere (barley) and aern (place). Now it can hold any number of agricultural items. A "mill" referred specifically to a place where you made meal, and now it can grind anything. Similarly, "manufacturing" was done by hand (main, in French); "saucers" held sauce; and "pen knives" were used exclusively to fix quill pens. Originally "assassin" and "thug" referred to murderers who belonged to eastern religious sects only. Through the miracle of globalization, Westerners too can be members of the fraternities of thugs and assassins.
Words can also transform through narrowing. The word "deer" once referred to any animal, "meat" to any food, "accident" to any incident, "actor" to any doer, "liquor" to any fluid, "hound" to any dog, "flesh" to any meat, "fowl" to any bird, "doctor" to any learned person, "garage" to any storage space, and "starve" just meant to die, not die because of lack of food.
Because of the capricious nature of people, words are subject to value judgments and go through the processes of pejoration and amelioration. Often this is the result of changes in society. So the word "knave" once meant any boy, but then through pejoration, or a downward movement, came to refer to a rascal. Similarly, "lewd" referred only to the laity, "boor" any peasant, and "vulgar" only meant common. The movement away from a feudal, agrarian lifestyle facilitated the deterioration of these words. The value of words is often determined by groups that possess power, and boors and knaves drew the short stick. On the other hand, the word "noble" — which at first referred only to the accident of being born into an aristocratic family — ameliorated, or moved upward, to imply one with a virtuous character.
'Awful' once meant exactly what you'd think it would mean: Something that inspired awe
Usually it will take many decades, if not centuries, for a word's sense to deteriorate, but sometimes the process is remarkably quick. For example, when Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton wrote The Honest Whore, Part 1, in 1604, the sense of "sanctimonious" was merely "possessing sanctity." However, when Shakespeare wrote Measure for Measure shortly thereafter, the implied sense of the word was "feigned sanctity," and this has become its dominant meaning.
This pejoration process is ongoing. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) describes "junta" in neutral terms as a "deliberative or administrative council or committee." I would hazard a guess, however, that when a revision of this word takes place, then terms such as "military dictatorship" or "coup" are likely to appear as synonyms. We have also seen a pejoration process since 1938 with the word "appeasement" as a result of then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's fruitless attempt to pacify Hitler before the outbreak of war with Germany in 1939. By extension, the word "appeasement" is now used to refer to any policy that attempts to pacify an aggressive opponent by making concessions. Similarly, the word "collaborate" before the Second World War meant only to work in conjunction with others, but by 1941 it had taken on the added sense to co-operate in a traitorous manner with an enemy.
In his famous essay "Politics and the English language," George Orwell noted incisively: "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Although politicians try to manipulate the meaning of words to hide murderous acts, eventually hardly anyone is fooled, and words that originally didn't have nefarious connotations acquire new senses. Examples of such are "neutralization," "pacification" and "liquidation."
Let's look at some other words whose meanings have gone down-market.
BULLY
"Bullies" once received better press and more cards on Valentine's Day than they do today. The OED informs us that "bully" was originally a "term of endearment and familiarity … applied to either sex: sweetheart, darling." The term was "later applied to men only, implying friendly admiration: good friend, fine fellow, 'gallant.'" "Bully" was often used as a prefix to the name or designation of the person addressed, as in Shakespeare where we find "bully Bottom" and "bully doctor." In the 17th century, this somewhat swashbuckling character started to be seen as a ruffian who persecuted those weaker than himself. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it could also mean "pimp," but the last citation with this sense in the OED dates back to 1817. Today there is a concerted attempt to stamp out bullying, especially in schools, and there are few bullies who will be met with "bully for you."
DEMAGOGUE
If you call someone a "demagogue," you're probably not giving them a compliment. However, the OED's first meaning of the word, plus its etymology ("popular leader," from Greek), is rather positive: "In ancient times, a leader of the people; a popular leader or orator who espoused the cause of the people against any other party in the state." John Milton, in Eikonoklastes (1649), was the first person to use the word in a negative sense to depict a political agitator whose oratory cynically uses the prejudices of a mob to further political ambitions.
FAGGOT
How times change. Originally the term "a flaming faggot" would have been a totally value-neutral expression and its use would have been restricted to describing a bundle of sticks ablaze. The word is found in its original sense in English in the 14th century, but by the 16th century it is used to refer to kindling wood used for burning heretics. The expression "to fry a faggot" meant to be burned alive, and "to carry a faggot" referred to those who renounced heresy. By the late 16th century, it becomes a term of abuse or contempt for a woman. This probably occurred because a broom could be fashioned from a bundle of sticks. Because a broom is not a highly prized object, and is associated with domestic chores often saddled on women, the term "faggot" became a pejorative term for a woman.
Junta once referred to any council or deliberative body. Today, it's almost always used to describe a military dictatorship
The process of transformation of the major sense of "faggot" from "woman" to "homosexual" occurs in the early part of the 20th century. The first citation in the OED in 1914 makes it clear that the word is hardly mainstream, but the homosexual sense of the word was much more common by the 1930s. Tthe word "faggot" is hardly alone in having its primary meaning shift from a description of a woman to a homosexual. Any derogatory word for a woman — or any that are associated with the distinctive parts of a female — can be applied to homosexuals, or for that manner to any male perceived as effeminate or not "man enough."
PUNY
"Puny" began its life in the 16th century as a noun that meant "a junior or recently admitted pupil or student in a school or university, or in the inns of court." It quickly adopted the more general sense of someone younger than others, who would be deemed to be inexperienced or inferior. Its adjectival sense of extremely small or weak derives from that meaning. "Puny" is in fact a phonetic spelling of the 12th-century French puisne, from puis, "later" and né, "born." Obviously a younger child will not usually have the strength of an older and larger one. The word "puisne" (pronounced as "puny") still exists in English with a specific designation in law to refer to a judge of a lower rank.
SILLY
When this word first surfaced in the 13th century, its original sense was "deserving of pity," and over the next three centuries it acquired the senses of "weak," "meagre," "trifling" and "unlearned." At one point the word became the conventional poetic adjective of choice to describe sheep. What is weak is often regarded as inconsequential, and the inconsequential are often regarded as foolish. Hence it wasn't a major leap when its now dominant sense of "foolish" was attained toward the end of the 16th century. Interestingly enough, "silly" originally came from the defunct adjective "seely," a word that was wholly positive and could mean happy, lucky or blessed. Similarly, the word "cretin" derives from "Christian." The term creitin or crestin was used in the Swiss alps to refer to someone afflicted with mental weakness and stunted growth who, it was believed, would retain a child-like innocence that would protect him or her from committing grave sins. It would not take long for the "fools of God" to be regarded merely as fools.
Lest you believe at this juncture some law of entropy forces all words to deteriorate in meaning, you will be relieved to know that, in fact, some words actually improve with age.
How Happy Became Homosexual and Other Mysterious Semantic Shifts by Howard Richler, © 2013 Press. Reprinted with permission.
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Source: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/howard-richler-when-good-words-go-bad
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