One of my little hobbies is spotting when words change their meaning, often to the disgust of (over?) zealous grammarians.
“Refute” now seems merely to mean disagreeing, rather than disagreeing successfully and persuasively, which is what refuting an argument definitely used to mean.
“Sophisticated” has, for many years now, meant admirably and subtly complicated. But in Shakespeare’s King Lear, Lear himself uses the word sophisticated (here 1899-1900) to mean complicated in a bad way, as in over-complicated, affected, over-elaborate, over-socialised.
“Disinterested” now merely means “not interested”, in many mouths.
A fellow Samizdatista whose hospitality I enjoyed this afternoon reminded me that the words “hack” and “hacker” have also been on a bit of a journey, following the quite recent invention of the word to mean the various things it means now (as opposed to just hacking meat from a bone or some such thing). Hacking used to mean merely acquiring an understanding of a complicated, often computerised of course, system. It meant sussing it out, working it out. It still does, among the people who still use the word this way. But those of us not familiar with the hacker fraternity typically regard hacking as computerised breaking and entering, and thieving, of information. Hacking, to us non-illuminati, means the same as hacking into. What started out as a morally neutral, even admiring, word has taken on a meaning that automatically includes wickedness.
Earlier today, while wallowing in England’s cricketing success yesterday against India, I think I may have spotted another of these walkabout words, here, although in this particular case I hope not, because this is a word I would personally like to stay put:
England demolished India at a delirious Edgbaston to usurp the tourists at the top of the world Test rankings.
“Usurp”, to me, says that there was something illegal or improper about England’s arrival at the number one test match cricket spot. The implication, to me, is that maybe an English cricket delegation – perhaps those two Andrews again – somehow pressurised the custodians of the ranking system into declaring England the top team despite England not actually having enough points, or whatever it is you must have the most of to be the top team for real. But nobody – not the writer of the above sentence, Sam Sheringham, nor anybody else – is suggesting this. Not on purpose anyway. Also, you usurp a title or a throne, not the person who previously held it.
Is Sheringham perhaps wanting to imply (infer?) that, given their lofty status in the world of cricket – because of them having by far the most cricket fans and, until now, a stellar batting line-up, still a stellar line-up if you go by the mere names and their test match achievements in the past – India have some sort of divine right to be the top team? Well, some vague thought along these lines may be why the word occurred to him, and why his editors didn’t change it. But what Sheringham is really reporting is that India used to be the top team, but now England have toppled them, fair and square. “Supplant” or “replace” would have been better words for his purpose. My video recorder tells me that earlier this evening Mark Nicholas, finishing up a highlights show of the series so far, on Channel 5 TV, used the word “toppled”.
Personally, I like the fluidity of language. I like how we can all invent new words, which immediately get across something otherwise hard to explain. I like “walkabout” for example, even if nobody outside of Australia knew of this word two centuries ago (although perhaps they did, I don’t know). And I regard the loss of good words as the price that must be paid for the widespread right that we Anglos all enjoy to make up new words, or acquire new words from each other. The common point of both word destruction and word creation being that together, we do it, rather than being told what’s what, verbally, by some damn committee of self-important academics in London.
I love that “television” is a mixture of Latin and Greek, and that – or so the story goes – an irate newspaper correspondent once argued that because of this linguistic abomination, the thing itself would never work. I had no idea, until I found my way to this collection today, that there are so many such Latin/Greek hybrid words in common English use.
I also enjoy, from time to time, concocting sentences without proper verbs in them. What’s that you say? Not allowed? Hard cheese.
I also enjoy turning nouns into adjectives, as English allows as a matter of routine.
Even so, all that being said, I would be sorry to see the word “usurp” ceasing to mean, well: usurp. It’s a good word and a useful word, and a word with a significant history. I think we should keep it meaning what it has meant for centuries. If we do not, a lot of history will have to be laboriously rewritten.
“Usurp” should not, that is to say, be usurped.
The problem with “refute” is that it’s still being given the weight associated with its true meaning, while being (supposedly) accomplished by mere disagreement.
It almost seems deliberate to me. It’s only the left who are using it in this way.
While I certainly agree with you about this usurpation of the word “usurp”, keep in mind that (in the US, anyway, and I presume in Britain as well) sports writers have a habit of using words in, well, novel ways. I suspect that it’s a more or less subconscious affectation, a reflection of the nagging realization that what they devote all their time to is so unimportant. Using relatively uncommon words makes them seem (in their own estimation, anyway) more intellectual, thus imparting more gravitas to their work. Occasionally using those words incorrectly is an occupational hazard.
I wouldn’t worry too much about “usurp” until non-sports writers start misusing it in that fashion. “Disinterested” is more of a concern.
The fluidity of language embiggens our conversational options.
Part of his problem may have been that he used ‘demolished’ when he meant ‘decimated’.
Cheers
Someone who would use “usurp” instead of a perfectly good and correct “replace” is not enlarging the language, he is just showing that he is illiterate.
Or he’s simply biased. That’s why to me ‘influential’ is not necessarily an accolade – I hope that that particular sports writer is not too “influential”.
You’re being generous, Brian.
In all the examples you give, the ‘fluidity of language’ is serving only to erode subtlety. Those gifted with a job writing for the MSM, but not with an interest in reading, consider it good style to use a broad vocabulary to make a narrow range of statements. We don’t need two words for ‘uninterested’ quite as much as we need one for ‘disinterested.’
Laird made the point that sports writers attempt to elevate their subject by the application of a thesaurus, and I think the point can be generalised to the MSM. I
Ham
The “examples I give”, of words being lost, I later describe as the “price” we pay for linguistic freedom. I do not favour good words, like refute and disinterested, being lost. I do favour good new words being invented or drawn into the linguistic mainstream from linguistic subcultures. On the whole I think the latter process larger and more significant than the former.
The only sense in which I think those who complain about such word losses are being over-zealous is that I think that such losses are bound to keep happening.
I put it to you that you yourself use quite a few words in ways that educated persons of about eighty years ago would be angered by and often for good reasons, were they to hear you doing this. As do I. In the nature of things, we do not know what these words are. Some words just lose their force. It happens.
All true, Brian. The only problem is, the playing field of language is no more level than that of education – the former having been monopolized by the left through the monopoly on the latter. Orwell noticed that.
I’m pleased to note that I haven’t heard anyone using the word “revert” recently when they mean “call back”. There was a horrible rash of that about 4 years ago.
The tick of saying “how good is that?” when you mean “that is good” is also, thankfully, fading away. I remember asking an attendant at Chessington World Of Adventures “how long is this queue?” and he answered “yeah, tell me about it”.
The one that enjoyed a brief flurry was saying “to say that is good would be an understatement” when you mean “that is good”. Blair used that once or twice in his autobiography and all of a sudden it was everywhere. Hopefully that will die under its own weight.
Sorry, drifted a bit off topic there. Teenage children, you know.
Yeah, tell me about it:-)
I am sure you are right about that. Indeed, I like to think I would be disappointed to have missed those more precise meanings when they were illuminated for me.
I didn’t mean to suggest that your conclusion was wrong: I wouldn’t want a regulated language either. But I think many of these common mistakes are the product of a banal and lazy attitude towards our language, rather than an exercise in creative destruction. It is the price we pay, as you say, but don’t accept that it’s a necessary price.
Fortunately we have a replacement for the older, stronger use of “refute”. Ms. Sarah Palin has introduced “refudiate”, which would seem to mean to refute, repudiate and otherwise totally annihilate an opposing argument. And even if that word were coined during a “short between the earphones”, it is still pretty neat.
It’s great to see someone who acknowledges the etymology and (in my opinion) proper meaning of “hacker”. Back in the ’70s, when I was a high school student learning the trade on a Data General minicomputer equipped with a whopping 64K of memory, “hacker” was a term of respect. It signified someone who had demonstrated the ability to make the very limited computers of the day do things seemingly beyond their capabilities.
Going back a bit further on that word, the sources I’ve read suggest that it derives from the use of the word “hack” in the newspaper business circa 1950, to signify a reporter who cranked out a lot of articles. (As I understand it, the word didn’t have the negative connotation in that sense that it has now.) Possibly it crossed the boundary from reporters to programmers due to the relative crudity of the tools that both groups employed at the time: reporters were still mostly typing their copy on manual typewriters, while the programmers dealt with Teletypes and similar electromechanical monstrosities. Typing on a Teletype was not for the faint of heart; you had to use a lot of force on the keys but also maintain a steady rhythm, or the mechanism would jam. And the keys fought back; anyone who has ever used a Teletype knows what I mean by this — a kick-back from the mechanism that travels back through your finger bones.
Regarding “sophisticated”, I see the possibility that the word returns to something close to its Shakesperian meaning. I am lately seeing the word “sophisticate” used in a mocking sense to describe the self-important leftist fools who adopt the trappings of intellectualism and high society, without any real qualifications for either. Their though processes are fussy and filled with words and phrases which actually have no meaning, but act as audible cues which identify them as members of a tribe.
Wasn’t the noun colmanballs coined for this situation?
One usage that annoys me is when you hear someone say “I’m sat here in the TV studio”. Regardless of what you think about the rules of language, it sounds horrible. The late Keith Waterhouse, who wrote a wonderful short book about use of English, once had a good rule: if it sounds ugly, it is probably also incorrect.
Brian (and the comment people here) are right abut the word “refute”.
I noticed this in 2008 – indeed in 2004.
Barack Obama “refuted” the charges made against him by denying them – he produced no evidence to counter the charges about Bill Ayers and so on, just the denial was a “refutation”.
And it was the same in 2004 with John Kerry (when I first noticed the change in the meaning of the word).
17 of the 24 officers he served with in Vietnam gave testimony against him, yet he “refuted” their charges (which were supported with hard evidence) simply by denying them.
Indeed to “swiftboat” has now be made a verb (by the academics as well as the media) meaning to smear. Young people (who never heard the original testimony – and never will, indeed the main media outlets tried to avoid coverage of the charges at the time) no doubt believe that John Kerry was “smeared”. And this traitor (let us not mince words – that is what Kerry is – he gave aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States during time of war, including in his actions before Congress at the time) is now head of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
This someone fits the “Age of Obama” (who was, of course, the keynote speaker at the Convention that nominated John Kerry, then the Senator with the most leftist voting record in the United States Senate, to be President of the United States).
It is as if all I need say is “I am not bald” and anyone who says I am bald has smeared me – for my denial has “refuted” their claim.
However, I think this (the changed meaning of he word “refute”) only applies if one is on the left.
I like the word ‘affect’, but politicians seems to prefer ‘impact on’. the effect is less pleasing, I think.
And can anyone tell me why we have ‘right/righteous’ but not ‘left/lefteous’?
🙂
How about “wrong/wrongteous”?