Old words, new meanings

Language is dynamic. It is a cliché. I know. Nevertheless, it is the truth. Languages change with changes in the mores and the morals in the society. In my younger days in journalism, no reporter would dare call the human reproductive organs by their ordinary or biological names. It was forbidden. Naming them offended the […]

Language is dynamic. It is a cliché. I know. Nevertheless, it is the truth. Languages change with changes in the mores and the morals in the society. In my younger days in journalism, no reporter would dare call the human reproductive organs by their ordinary or biological names. It was forbidden. Naming them offended the sensibilities of our decent society. A slew of ‘decent’ words and expressions were invented to do the important job of not keeping the decent society decent.

Today, much of that has changed. No one feels embarrassed any more when those human organs are named in the news media – print and electronic. Great changes have come upon the contemporary mores and morals of all modern societies. The onset of the permissive society in the seventies in the Western world must have helped here. Modern society accepted not keep speaking with a forked tongue.

Do you know how much many English words have undergone a sea of change too? For instance, the word gay was a decent word used to describe a feeling of joy. A gay man was unabashedly a happy man. But gay no longer describes a happy man. It it is now used to refer to those we used to call homosexuals (men) and lesbians (women). Remember that your happy friend is no longer gay. He is just a happy man full of fun.

In 1988, Albert M. Wella, Jr. published an interesting poem in his book, Inspiring Quotations, on the changing meanings of some familiar English words. I have reproduced the poem here to show the risk writers take if they do not keep abreast of these changes. Here then is the poem. Note the capitalised words in bold type: 

Remember when HIPPIE meant

Big in the hips

And a TRIP involved travel in cars, planes and ship?

When POT was a vessel for cooking things in,

And HOOKED was what grandmother’s rug might have been?

When FIX was a verb that meant mend or repair

And being IN meant simply existing somewhere?

When NEAT meant well-organised, tidy and clean?

And GRASS was a ground-cover normally green

When light and not people were TURNED ON and OFF,

And the PILL might have been what you took for cough?

When CAMP meant to stay outdoors in a tent?

And POP was the way that the weasel went?

When GROOVY meant furrowed with channels and hollows,

And BIRDS were winged creatures, like robins and swallows?

When FUZZ was a substance that’s fluffy like lint,

When BREAD came from bakeries, and not from the mint?

When SQUARE meant a 90-degree-angled form,

And COOL was a temperature, not quite so warm?

When ROLL meant a bun, and ROCK was a stone,

And HUNG-UP was something you did to a phone?

When CHICKEN meant poultry and BAG meant a sack,

And JUNK, trashy castoff and old bric-a-brac?

When JAM was preserves that you spread on your bread,

And CRAZY meant barmy, not right in the head?

When CAT was a feline, a kitten grown up,

And TEA was a liquid you drank from a cup?

When SWINGER was someone who swung in the wing,

And PAD was a soft, sort of cushiony thing?

When WAY OUT meant distant and far, far away,

And a man wouldn’t sue you for calling him GAY?

When DIG meant to shovel and spade in the dirt,

And PUT ON was what you would do with a shirt?

When TOUGH described meat too unyielding to chew

And MAKING A SCENE was a rude thing to do?

Words once so sensible, sober and serious,

Are making the FREAK SCENE quite PSYCHEDELIRIOUS,

It’s GROOVY, MAN, GROOVY but English it’s not!

Me thinks that our language has gone straight to POT.