John Brown
Freeloading Social media influenza
Of course the meaning of words changes over time. I don't think it's always desirable, but it is inevitable. I believe the rate of change has increased enormously over the past few decades as a consequence of the web. One of the problems is that different sections of society adopt these changes at different rates, and you hear older folk complaining that "coloured", for example, was perfectly acceptable when they were young, but now it's frowned upon. Most young people adapt to these changes more quickly, in my experience.
Maybe too quickly, as today's PC term becomes tomorrow's playground taunt.
We also have to take care in areas such as the law, medicine - almost every area, to be honest. If people decide left means right, or live means neutral, we're in big trouble.
I personally deplore the fact that literally now means nothing, and people use imply and infer interchangeably. Fulsome has lost its way, and exponentially means whatever you want it to. But it's pointless to behave like the Scandinavian king with the misspelled name, trying to force back the tide(yes, I know that the story is he was trying to demonstrate the futility of such efforts, just like the cat-in-a-box guy was illustrating how quantum stuff doesn't cut it with cat sized things).
Do you think it'll start happening with spelling? I'm already at the stage where I do a double take if I see "definite" or "separate" spelt correctly. Do you think the future dictionaries will embrace these "alternative" spellings? After all, it's not that long ago that "ize" was the preferred suffix for very many words in British English, but now people react in horror at supposed American influence when "ize" is used. I suppose the ubiquitous spell checkers go some way to safeguarding the spelling, hence "definate" often being rendered as "defiant". Sadly, as far as I know, they don't query the use of literally.
Maybe too quickly, as today's PC term becomes tomorrow's playground taunt.
We also have to take care in areas such as the law, medicine - almost every area, to be honest. If people decide left means right, or live means neutral, we're in big trouble.
I personally deplore the fact that literally now means nothing, and people use imply and infer interchangeably. Fulsome has lost its way, and exponentially means whatever you want it to. But it's pointless to behave like the Scandinavian king with the misspelled name, trying to force back the tide(yes, I know that the story is he was trying to demonstrate the futility of such efforts, just like the cat-in-a-box guy was illustrating how quantum stuff doesn't cut it with cat sized things).
Do you think it'll start happening with spelling? I'm already at the stage where I do a double take if I see "definite" or "separate" spelt correctly. Do you think the future dictionaries will embrace these "alternative" spellings? After all, it's not that long ago that "ize" was the preferred suffix for very many words in British English, but now people react in horror at supposed American influence when "ize" is used. I suppose the ubiquitous spell checkers go some way to safeguarding the spelling, hence "definate" often being rendered as "defiant". Sadly, as far as I know, they don't query the use of literally.
