On Thu, 15 Aug 2002, Chris Olson - SunPS wrote: #True. At the same time, however, human nature does not #mean "correct". In your above examples, for instance, #No one ever told me where the word "cab" came from (yes, #I knew by making an educated guess:) And I'll even go #so far as to agree with what you say. But "carriage" is #a new word, compared to "carry". "Cab" is a word apart from #"cabriolet". So we are, in a sense, in the habit of inventing #new words for slightly different usages. But these are adaptations of existing words to new meanings. I wasn't clear. "Cab" was not invented to refer to taxicabs; it was applied to cabriolets and other horse-drawn vehicles, and then to motor vehicles, and now only to motor vehicles for hire and usually equipped with a (ta-dahh!) taximeter to calculate the fare. (Oh, also to a part of a locomotive, etc.) "Carriage" meant an act of carrying or the manner of carrying for centuries before it was applied to a vehicle. # At the same time, #we also have a tendency, as human beings (or at least American's, #I'm not a linguist:) to create or change words where there is #no real need. Slang being the most obvious example. How many #words do we need to express, for instance, killing someone? Language does much, much more than express truth-value meaning. It demonstrates group membership (I talk like one of OUR people; that person doesn't), attitude (I scorn the person I am talking about: "and then what do you think the b*****d did?"), and many other things. A language without slang is like a kitchen without pepper. [...] #> 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, # #But that alone can cause confusion in a language. Which dictionary #do "we" use if, say, there's an argument over the meaning of a word? What remedy do you recommend? #OK, now what if all the dictionary-writers got together and #decided to change "fig" to mean "prune"? Would that make it #right? Of course not. That's my point. What's yours? I mean that literally, not as challenge. -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel