#semantics

[prokopetz]

One of my favourite bits of Middle English trivia is that in medieval England, illusionism – that is, stage magic based on sleight of hand – was considered to be part of the juggler's art, which eventually caused many words for "magic" to acquire a secondary meaning of "juggling", and vice versa. If you read in an account from the period that someone practised jugglery, that means they were either a juggler or a sorcerer, and sometimes the context does not help!

[ferrymens-lantern]

Cody is so done with his shit

This is like the fourth time this campaign it’s happened

[stardustmuseum]

there’s literally (literal) and literally (figuratively), and i love both until i have to specify by saying “the literal definition of literally. like actually, i’m so serious.”

[lichenaday]

Would you be willing to give us a glossary of lichen terms? I'm picking up some of them through exposure (thallus, apothecium) but others are harder. I can look them up myself, but they'll stay in my head better if they're described by the same person who is posting about them regularly! (My brain can be weird sometimes.)

I have done this before, and I will try to find that post and pin it to my page (why does tumblr make it so hard to find past posts???). But until then, Wikipedia has a pretty good glossary of lichen terms.

[vintage-tigre]

[synticity]

the three linguistics papers to read about singular they (morphosyntax)

Bjorkman, B. M. (2017). Singular they and the syntactic representation of gender in English. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 2(1). Open access link

Konnelly, L., & Cowper, E. (2020). Gender diversity and morphosyntax: An account of singular they. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 5(1). open access link

Conrod, K. (2022). Abolishing gender on D. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, 67(3), 216-241. Open access link

in chronological order because these papers are all basically responding to each other; this papers focus on the (morpho)syntax and semantics of english singular 'they' referring to specific people (like they/them pronoun-users).

if you like posts like this, let me know! i'll give "three linguistics papers to read about (topic)" every once in a while based on interest

[unsolicited-opinions]

Semantic Warfare

I always hated the way right-wing political creatures dishonestly redefined and demonized words. The best examples from the 60s through the 90s are probably feminism and liberal.

Feminism

Simone de Beauvoir articulated feminism in The Second Sex (1949) as the fight for women to be recognized as full human beings. Equal in dignity, autonomy, and opportunity. Not superior, not vengeful, jut fully human.

By the 1970s, this core idea had gained mainstream traction. Feminists were reshaping labor laws, family expectations, reproductive rights. Then came the backlash.

Phyllis Schlafly cast feminism as anti-family and anti-motherhood. Her campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment succeeded not just politically, but linguistically. "Feminist" began to imply a woman who hated men, hated babies, and wanted to force everyone into genderless conformity.

The Reagan era amplified this. Cultural conservatives and religious broadcasters doubled down. By the 1990s, Rush Limbaugh popularized the slur "feminazi," linking feminism with tyranny and genocide in one stroke. His listeners didn't need a definition, because they had emotional resonance.

It worked. By the early 2000s, many women, including progressives, said: "I'm not a feminist, but..."

A 2020 Pew study found that while most Americans supported feminist goals like workplace equality, only a minority -- including among women -- identified as feminists.

The word had been gutted.

Liberal

Before it was a slur, "liberal" meant something proud. Classical liberalism emerged from Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and John Stuart Mill. In America, it evolved to mean belief in civil liberties, free expression, democracy, and activist government protecting the vulnerable.

Think FDR's New Deal. JFK's optimism. Even Eisenhower accepted the basic framework of liberal governance.

But by the Cold War, "liberal" became suspect. McCarthyists blurred the line between liberals and communists. As Vietnam split the left, conservatives seized the moment. Ronald Reagan built his career mocking the "liberal elite." Newt Gingrich made it toxic.

By the 1990s, liberal was an insult.

The right accused liberals of being soft on crime, big on taxes, hostile to religion, and obsessed with political correctness. Many liberals stopped calling themselves that, adopting "progressive" instead, hoping to dodge the landmines.

Until that word got the same treatment.

Language scholars and political analysts have tracked this retreat. Surveys show "liberal" triggers more negativity than "conservative" in many swing states. This is semantic warfare.

But the left learned from these experiences and started using the same dishonest weapon. The best example of this semantic distortion from the far left is obvious:

Zionism

Zionism began as a Jewish liberation movement responding to centuries of persecution, pogroms, and statelessness. Theodor Herzl and his successors defined it plainly: Jews, like any other people, deserve a safe and sovereign refuge in a portion of their indigenous homeland.

It was a broad tent. Socialist Zionists building egalitarian kibbutzim, religious Zionists dreaming of biblical restoration, liberal Zionists imagining a pluralistic Middle Eastern democracy. It was never monolithic and the sole commonality was the belief in Jewish national self-determination and self-defense.

But after 1967, and especially after the 1975 UN resolution declaring "Zionism is racism," bad actors sought to strategically redefine the word.

It wasn't conservatives this time. It was leftists taking a page from Klansmen.

That 1976 resolution, orchestrated by Soviet and Arab bloc nations, deliberately and dishonestly conflated Israel's political existence with apartheid South Africa (in the process also abusing the word "apartheid").

Though revoked in 1991, the damage was done. The Durban Conference in 2001 supercharged it. Zionism became colonialism, white supremacy, and genocide...all in one convenient smear, courtesy of dishonest, deliberate redefinition of all those terms.

Activist groups from Students for Justice in Palestine to segments of the Democratic Socialists of America adopted this framing. Zionism was no longer a liberation movement. It was an evil to be purged.

This is no less dishonest, calculated and vile than what the right did to "feminism" and "liberalism."

Jews on the left found themselves cornered. Either renounce Zionism (and by extension Israel's right to exist( or get branded a fascist. A settler. A baby killer.

They even imitated Limbaugh's FemiNazi with "ZioNazi."

Those who marched for civil rights, protested Vietnam, and campaigned for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were no longer welcome if they held fast to Jewish national identity, Jewish self-defense, and Jewish liberation.

"Zionist" is now a slur on college campuses, in activist circles, on social media. Young Jews are gaslit into thinking the movement that made their safety possible is inherently oppressive. They internalize the lie or go silent.

That's where we are today.

This isn't just about words, it isn't just about Israel, it isn't just about Jews.

It's about meaning, identity, power, and propaganda.

When the right poisoned "feminist" and "liberal," the goal wasn't debate, it was delegitimization. Making people ashamed of their ideals. Turning self-respect into self-censorship.

Now the far left is doing the same to "Zionist."

Same playbook. Same erasure. Same result. Silence the moderates, exile the liberals, and flatten the discourse until only extremists remain.

Call it what it is: a linguistic coup. A theft not just of words, but of the identities they name and the histories they hold.

We don't have to accept it, though.

We can reclaim the language, femand definitions, and refuse to let dishonest politics rewrite the dictionary.

---

You've probably noticed that this technique, once limited to the far right, is now used with tremendous versatility on the far left in a spectacular illustration of horseshoe theory.

A Sampling of Words the Far Left Has Been Redefining:

Zionism: From Jewish self-determination to colonial oppression

Genocide: From systematic extermination to any military action

Occupation: Used regardless of recognized borders or withdrawal (e.g., Gaza post-2005)

Resistance: Applied to indiscriminate violence against civilians

Ceasefire: Often meaning only Israeli restraint, not mutual de-escalation

Settler: Extended to any Jew in Israel, including Tel Aviv or Haifa

Indigenous: Claimed by groups with centuries of presence, denied to Jews with millennia of presence

Apartheid: Applied to Israel despite universal suffrage, citizenship and voting rights for the ~20% of Israeli citizens who aren't Jews.

Colonizer/Colonized: Framed as racial binaries, erasing Jewish Middle Eastern history

Liberation: Used to justify terrorism or annihilationist rhetoric

Each word, once precise, is being (or has already been) repurposed to serve a narrative. The goal isn't clarity. It's to win by distortion. Just as the right did to feminist and liberal.

The left learned how to do it from Phyllis Schlafly, Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, and Rush Limbaugh.

But Words Mean Things.

War ≠ genocide.

Rape ≠ resistence.

National borders ≠ the walls of an "open air prison."

Suicide bombing ≠ heroism.

Terrorists targeting civilians ≠ "freedom fighters."

Civilian hostages ≠ "prisoners of war."

An indigenous people reclaiming a part of their homeland ≠ colonizers.

The colonizers of the Arab conquests ≠ "liberators."

Words Mean Things, and you can refuse to accept this dishonest tactic, whether it's being weaponized by the far right or the far left.

No, really. Words Mean Things.

[s-darling-art]

The Batgirls

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