The Politics of Meaning and Usage in English (I)
This prodded a lively email conversation between us on why there is often a disjunction between what has been prescribed as correct usage by grammar experts and what real, living people actually speak and write—and why grammarians later succumb to popular usages, which they then codify and hold up as inviolable standards, which are then […]
This prodded a lively email conversation between us on why there is often a disjunction between what has been prescribed as correct usage by grammar experts and what real, living people actually speak and write—and why grammarians later succumb to popular usages, which they then codify and hold up as inviolable standards, which are then violated again by people, usually in a subsequent generation, ad nauseam.
Look at these examples: “Meat” used to denote food in general (that sense of the word is still retained in the age-old saying, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison); “girl” used to mean any young person of either sex; “deer” initially referred to any animal, a reason Shakespeare wrote of “rats and mice and such small deer”; “silly” used to mean fortunate or happy; “broadcast” used to refer to the act of throwing seeds in all directions, not to the dissemination of information through radio and TV; “holiday” is derived from “holy day,” but the word is now used for any day of freedom from work, even if these days are secular; “villain” used to mean a village peasant, but it now only means a wicked or evil person; “aggressive” used to mean hostile and destructive behavior, but in modern business language there is often a tone of approval when someone is described as an “aggressive businessman” or when methods are described as “aggressive strategies”; “academic,” an otherwise respectable word, is now also used derisively to mean impractical, pedantic; “rhetoric,” a time-honored study and application of the art of persuasion, is now popularly used to mean mere loud, confused, and empty talk; and so on.
Similarly, the meanings of words can expand beyond their original meanings. For instance, the word “alibi” initially only meant “elsewhere,” and was used only in legal defense to mean that someone was elsewhere while a crime was committed and therefore couldn’t be blameworthy. Today, the semantic boundaries of that word have been extended to mean “excuse” or “self-justification” of any kind. Grammarians objected to this semantic extension for a long time. Many have given up now.
It’s the same story with the word “alternative.” It originally meant “other of two,” which meant that it couldn’t correctly be used for items that exceeded two. In time, however, people began to talk about “hundreds of alternatives.” At first grammarians were outraged by this mutilation of the word. There can only be “alternatives” for two choices, they protested. No one listened. They lost the battle.
They also lost the battle over the correct usage of the word “decimate.” It formerly meant “to kill one of every ten.” To the horror of grammatical purists, people extended the semantic boundaries of the word to mean “kill a large number,” to “wipe out,” to “eliminate.” So everyday users of English again decimated the grammatical purists in the battle over the usage of “decimate”!