Linguistics question for uou: How does your stance re: changing of a word apply to the instances where a layperson's misunderstanding of a word *does* change its meaning?
One that comes to mind is "nimrod." Originally meaning a skillfull hunter, its sacrastic use in Bugs Bunny cartoons to mean "idiot" or "buffoon" when describing Elmer Fudd caused it to shift to an almost opposite meaning.
(In reference to my addition to a post about the word “favour,” in the context of an injured limb. In its context, which is often veterinary, the injured limb is the one that is “favoured”. The majority of respondents to the poll believe that one “favours” the UN-injured limb, with many in the notes claiming that this should be considered semantic drift, and that “there is no incorrect answer” because “language evolves.”)
I’m not a linguist, and I’m all for language evolving.
“Nimrod” is a cute case study. If you think about it in terms of evolution, there were NO pressures on keeping “Nimrod” reserved as a legendary Biblical hunter. It wasn’t being used for a specific working purpose; it wasn’t preserved in communities, anchored to practical duties, part of people’s living vocabs. It was able to drift because it was a literary reference, and found a funnier purpose.
“Favouring an injured limb”, on the other hand, is a descriptor actively being used by communities that talk about injured limbs. It has material utility and meets a need. It has a clear definition and rationale. It’s under continuous practical use. Flipping the definition, or claiming that it has another definition in YOUR head, just isn’t the same linguistic pressure as all the people using it correctly for material purposes. Just because the public aren’t familiar with its use, and are assigning it vibes based on other senses of the word, doesn’t mean that the word is up for drift.
“Teehee, I think it should mean the opposite thing!” is not hugely helpful or useful given the pragmatic gap between “active use” and “misreading”. People are USING it to mean something else. In fact, claiming that “the opposite meaning is just as valid” is clearly causing a lot of confusion in the notes of that post - is this helpful when talking about limb injury?
Further, “Language evolves” means that language evolves.
I do not believe that “language evolves” means:
Illiteracy wins wherever it secures a majority.
Vibes-based readings are just as valid as genuine literacy.
Misunderstandings matter more than material usage.
Laypeople’s confusion can and should change the meaning of a technical term that a community are actually actively using in a different sense.
Being genuinely wrong, with sufficient confidence, means you get to declare yourself correct, because of your own personal feelings, and further,
that this extra-special-double-down wrongness is ESPECIALLY allowed, suddenly, when it comes to processing information, because “it’s how language works.”
The apparently unchallenged genuine belief that this is how language functionally works.
The belief that language works on Internet-points rules and “language evolves” is a magical backdoor to making “both sides” arguments.
The belief that a grandma doing this confers additional respectability, and that respectability is the same thing as being correct.
That a “definition” of a word that meets no useful criteria for a definition - a vibes-based interpretation that is not defined, observed, recorded anywhere, agreed upon, serving any purpose, or meeting any need (because it’s just vibes and people being wrong) is really BASICALLY the same thing as the existing definition, which actually meets those criteria.
That it doesn’t matter if your personal interpretation is materially unhelpful, not useful, more confusing, directly contradicts the technical use, and is generally materially worse than if you just used the existing word properly - because it’s YOUR personal interpretation.
That “I feel like this should be the case” is equal to things actually being the case.
That, in general, “vibes” are as important and valid as actual material professional diagnostic use of a word.
Both sides of a directly contradictory argument are equally valid and correct - even in a case where one side is bringing evidence, and the other is bringing a misunderstanding based on other definitions of a word.
Those are all things that people on this post seem to think are included in things like “language evolves and meanings change 😌”. I do not agree that they are included. I know that people feel they do. That’s where my stance diverges.
My stance is that I literally don’t approve of the sentiments embodied in those bullet points. I don’t believe they’re rooted in good judgment, or a clear understanding of linguistics. I don’t believe they improve communication or clarity, or meet a material need, or plug a communication gap. I don’t think that “favour” is THAT confusing, when the limb-injury definition is freely available on the same public internet that people are on right now. I don’t believe that “that’s just how language works” is a super-special case where everyone ✨ magically gets to be right ✨ because it’s how their grandma used it, when we recognise that nothing else operates like that. I don’t generally think that being loudly wrong is just as correct as being quietly right.
And I have never seen any evidence that “language evolves,” used by people who work with language, genuinely means ANY of those things. “Language evolves” is stuff like “nimrod” and “chaise lounge.” It is not “myeloma and melanoma are the same thing” or “misreading is just as valid as reading.”
I don’t really have a horse in that fight. but I do think that people who believe in those bullet points are quite dreary, and I do not invite them to my dinner parties.
