Okay normally I'm on the side of "words mean whatever we need them to mean".
but guys, I donât like the suggestion that itâs what is happening here. Being unfamiliar with the term, and guessing its meaning based on vibes, doesnât mean you have equal authority on whether itâs âcorrectâ with the community who actively use this word in a technical sense.
please do consider that if you haven't been exposed to the word in the context it's used in, "both are correct" and "you can interpret it differently" and âthere is no right or wrong answerâ and âit feels like it SHOULD be Xâ cannot be a fully realised take. Sure, linguistics recognises there are rules in which meaning changes - but âlaypeople being unfamiliar with the word, and liking vibes betterâ isnât one of them.
You can do that with most words, especially slang, and shape them to the needs of the majority, but this isn't like... a fanfiction word, invented for fanfic and, like, solely used for injured hockey players where it doesnât matter if the injured limb swaps sides 4 times in a sex scene and phases through a stomach. It is, in its context, a bit more load-bearing (ha) than that.
It's fine to be unfamiliar with the context, and it's fine for words to change, but do just take a quick second to hear it in a native sentence!
One of the most common ways of using this word is to assess four-legged animals. "Favouring" is a specific grouping of behaviour - a hesitancy in gait, stiffness, reluctance to put weight on a limb. Itâs often inconsistent, as the animal tries to compensate or conceal the pain. It may not be a full limp or obvious lameness, since prey animals especially will actively try to conceal this; favouring is a subtle reluctance, and a useful word for a very specific recognisable behaviour that the animal is usually trying to lie about. (Thatâs probably why itâs used in romance fiction, as itâs an interestingly romantic and stoic way to react to pain, and doesnât mean the limb is inconveniently disabled. A fictional character favouring a wounded leg can wince attractively when itâs jostled, but it doesnât matter too much if the author forgets and has them run to the door suddenly - âfavouringâ isnât incompatible with ârunningâ in horses either.)
The sentence âFavouring the off hindâ is equestrian jargon: it means âpain behaviour on the back right leg.â It does not mean âopposite-pain in the not-on deerâ and is not confusing in its professional register.
If you've only vaguely heard of "myeloma", and most people in a poll are guessing it's a skin cancer, that doesn't mean that myeloma and melanoma can now readily collapse into the same word - they're under active use in their native contexts, where the people frequently using them do need to communicate the difference between skin and blood cancer.
A poll of laypeople misunderstanding âmyeloma,â or non-horse-people misunderstanding âfavouring,â isnât quite enough to indicate a full semantic shift and change of meaning of the term. The community that uses the term âfavouringâ in the context of âlimb injuryâ - vets, farriers, farmers, commentators, equestrians - knows what it means and uses it consistently in the same way. Theyâre not confused. because to them, it isnât a vibesy, sex-scene-hand waving word. Itâs a cluster of pain signals.
If you arenât familiar with that usage, then thatâs really more about your own lack of familiarity. Not all interpretations DO carry equal authority, especially when one is just confusion/unfamiliarity. You just havenât met it before, and thatâs fine.
Tl;dr: Iâm all for words changing meanings, but we shouldnât be too quick to declare that when itâs based entirely on unfamiliarity and vibes-based readings.
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