Oops, saw this in direct email without the list in the headers, so I've already replied privately. So you'll see something like this twice Mark, sorry. Mark A Mandel <mam at theworld.com> writes: > On 15 Aug 2002, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: > > #Mark A Mandel <mam at theworld.com> writes: > #> > #> 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. > # > #"Cab", however, is not the same word as "cabriolet", merely a word > #*descended from* it. Our use of "cab" is no hindrance to people > #wishing to use "cabriolet" to refer to what it still, in fact, refers > #to. > > But when "cab" was first extended to what is now its sole meaning (as > far as road vehicles go), people surely objected just as you're > objecting to the extension of "hopefully". Were they right? Depends if the technology was more important (that particular kind of carriage needed to keep its own special name and the abbreviation thereof) or if the use was more important (a name was needed to refer to for-hire vehicles). Given the ongoing importance of small two-wheel carriages, I think a sensible choice was made. > #And I certainly *do* connect "carriage" with "carry". > > But it's not, for you, 'an act of carrying'. At some time the extension > was new, and probably decried. See prev. paragraph. Sorry, it is. "Carriage" is an archaism now, and if I lived in a time when I used the vehicle regularly, that meaning probably *would* have displaced all the others, but for me now they're all historical and several of them are readily accessible. The phrase "carriage trade" and a number of technical legal terms around there are clearly hark back to the "carry" meaning. > #One of the things I very much like about computer jargon is the > #tendency to borrow words that mean about the right thing and give them > #a specific meaning in the software context. With a twist. I'm > #thinking of "demon" and "cookie" and such. > > Oh, dear, shouldn't they be inventing new words? Or am I confusing your > position with Steve's or someone else's? What's being done doesn't make the existing words less useful, so it's not against *my* principle's. Or Steven's either if I understand that right. One of the reasons I like them so well is that they clearly represent play by highly-literate people. They build on and work with the existing meanings, rather than clashing with them. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net / New TMDA anti-spam in test John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net Book log: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/Ouroboros/booknotes/ New Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info