Dragaera

OT: Subjectivity vs. Objectivity (was: bois...)

David Dyer-Bennet dd-b at dd-b.net
Mon Aug 26 15:51:32 PDT 2002

"Adam Heyman" <aheyman at rcn.com> writes:

> Mark A Mandel wrote:
> ||  2. The words introduced in the past four centuries have mostly been
> || highly technical words that most of us wouldn't even recognize, let
> || alone use. Lessee... pharyngealization, cytochrome,
> || intertextuality... well, maybe in THIS crowd, but not to the average
> || English speaker.  
> 
> Not all technical words are "highly" technical. Car, plane, radio,
> radar, stereo, etc. are words that are not considered technical but 
> have been added to common parlance in the last century due to
> certain technologies becoming common. I expect some of the 
> computer jargon that professionals use will seep into
> everyday use (like 'logging on' has).

And, to pick an example at random, "cabriolet" is a technical term
*now* but was an ordinary, common, term to people back a while, in the
same way "car" is to us now.  

> Balanced against this addition must also be considered the words lost
> due to technology gains. The profession of cooper, for example, is not
> as important now as in Shakespeare's time and most people today would not
> even know what a cooper did. Wainwright is another example of the same.

True enough.  Of course *I* know both of those off the top of my head
without even thinking about them, and most of the people I hang around
with do too.  Which just goes to show that the range of human
variation is *far wider* than most of us know about, because people
sort themselves and society sorts people into relatively homogenous
chunks. 
-- 
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