On Thu, 15 Aug 2002, Chris Olson - SunPS wrote:
#I believe I agree. At any rate, I've always felt it
#would be better to create new words for new concepts and
#ideas, rather than change the meaning of old words.
However, human nature, as displayed by the history of languages,
disagrees with you. When you speaking of hailing a cab, you don't think
of a cabriolet ("cab" for short), a two-wheeled, two-seat, one-horse
carriage with a folding top; but that's where the name came from. And
when you read "carriage" in the previous sentence you probably weren't
connecting it with "carry", but that's its origin. Word meanings and
usages have fuzzy boundaries, and extending them is natural. We would
have a much harder time communicating if we had to invent a new word
every time we encountered something that was a bit different from the
last thing we had seen that was similar to it.
#At the same time, words are constantly being "slanged",
Did you mean that to be self-referential?
#and new definitions are being forced onto sometimes long-standing
#words.
#
#I think, because of a lack of understanding of actual definitions,
#people generaly don't know what a word is supposed to mean, and
#only knows its definition by its source or the definition a reader/
#user will give to it at the time. Someone reading the word
#"subjective" might not know the actual definition, and may assume
#it has something to do with, say, the subject of a sentence.
As it does when it is the name of a grammatical case.
#It doesn't help, either, that different dictionaries can offer
#slight variations of definition. (A friend of mine just bought
#(from a bookstore-owner friend) the "OED" - Oxford English Dictionary.
#20 VOLUME set. For those SERIOUS english majors!!:)
Well, if they copied each other there'd be real fights about copyright.
-- Do you believe that dictionaries create or fix meaning? They do not.
They describe the meaning of words as they are used. People consult
dictionaries to find out what other people mean when they use the words,
just as they consult atlases to find out where places are, because these
reference books reflect the real world -- unlike consulting a company's
web site to find out the exact title of their chief financial officer.
The company creates the title; if they call her "Comptroller" or "Chief
Financial Officer" or "Vice President for Finance", that IS her title,
and if they change it, it IS changed; they define it, so they cannot be
wrong. (This is a made-up example, so please, nobody tell me that
there's a legal reason to keep them distinct.) But if Merriam-Webster
decided to change the definition of "fig" in their next edition to make
it the same as the definition of "prune", the definition would be wrong.
Lexicographers look at usage and try to figure out how people mean a
word. They may quite honestly and competently come to somewhat different
conclusions. Such is life.
-- Mark A. Mandel