Wrong Word Damn It
Has anybody else been noticing a recent trend to redefine already-known, well-understood words to mean something completely different (usually on the fly and without any contextual clues suggesting an altered meaning)? I don't know whether it is just coincidence that I've encountered it several times recently or whether it is a general rise of poor ( Read more... )
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That said, also many people are crap at having a decent vocabulary.
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I used to have a neighbour who was a language academic who got irate at the use of words like chairperson. He maintained that the 'man' in chairman was from the same language root as the 'man' in manage, meaning to hold. Chairman is derived from 'holding the chair'.
I saw a quote the other day saying that the thing that made English such a dominant language is that it is so specific. I've lost count of the times I've used an uncommon word and someone has asked me to define it and I've struggled because while I know what it means to me, I have found it really dificult to find other words that express the same specific granual meaning.
Using 'most' to mean 'occasionally' doesn't even have the ironic twist of saying someing is 'bad' to mean you think it is 'good'. It's just someone expressing themselves badly and refusing to own up that they used the wrong word.
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Misuse of "unconditional" in your post yesterday (not by you, by the original author whom you were quoting) is another example that jumped out at me, especially when followed up by the commenter who wanted "unconditional" to actually mean "unconditioned".
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Unconditional/unconditioned could be a case of tense creep. Then again, I have low expectations as to the literary style of a self-help website. Especially an American one. That's trying to sell you stuff.
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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
It's funny 'cos it's true.
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Yes, that's the quote I used in response to the misuse of the word "unconditional" yesterday.
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The Freeform example above has led to a few occasions where I've been having a different conversation to the person I was talking to.
Mostly I've found that the words tend to be nouns.
But my most recent example is Moot... Where I'm from, something that is moot is something that is irrelevant or insignificant minutae. Here, it seems to be something that is brought forth. (from context) - I was sent an email where the author wrote that he had heard that I'd mooted an idea that a meeting be set up... I'm like - no, I suggested that, I don't know who you are talking to who is saying that I mooted it! - and there was confusion until Husband translated it for me.
This happens all the time, mostly with colloquialisms meaning slightly different things, which is understandable... But occasionally with words that really make communication difficult.
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Actually, that's not an example of the sort of thing I'm talking about. Those are two widely-recognised meanings of the word "moot". Obviously you knew one, and your correspondent knew the other (not clear from the story whether you know he didn't know the first) but I knew both of those meanings. Nobody just made something up on the spot, and it sounds like you were able to talk through the differences to establish meaningful communication again.
As opposed to my example where the other guy seemed to be pulling stuff out of thin air and expected to never be called on that.
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In fact, all three meanings are related. A moot is a meeting for discussion and debate. To moot is to put the subject up for discussion and debate. Something is moot when it is so shrouded in doubt that it is good for naught but discussion and debate. The adjectival use once would have applied to any subject under discussion, but in time came to generally be applied only to those subjects that would remain under discussion forever, much the same as how "academic" is almost a perjorative in some uses today.
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