Mine is that at my age (barely made it into Gen Z on the old end) I just found out today that a Bo Weevil is an insect (beetle) and not some kind of mole or similar rodent.
Mine is that at my age (barely made it into Gen Z on the old end) I just found out today that a Bo Weevil is an insect (beetle) and not some kind of mole or similar rodent.
Isn’t this how language works ? If majority of the time people use the word in certain way, than that becomes one of its accepted meanings. In fact dictionaries list one of the meanings of “jealous” to be “envious” (with citations of this usage going back to 14th century, including works by Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain that are over 100 years old)
While obviously you’re correct, this is not necessarily a good thing. The jealousy-envy collapse is clearly an impoverishment of language. These are two different concepts and it’s useful to have words for concepts.
FWIW: the doctrine that “whatever people say is by definition correct and wise” is actually a pretty Anglocentric and modern thing. Linguists didn’t always think this, and you won’t get people saying this for French, for example.
Is it really a modern thing ? Somehow we got from Beowulf to Shakespeare, and from Latin to French in the past. I feel like the concept of “freezing” language in some fixed form is the more modern and academic ideal - and quite a quixotic one at that - people on the street will do with the language what they will as they always have.
Sure, that’s fair. And of course the guy on the street is not waiting on a linguistics academy for permission to open his mouth.
But you’re gonna have a tough time persuading me that a change like this is somehow “good” for our language. Languages get poorer as well as richer through use. The envy-jealousy case to me looks pretty clear: most people never learned the difference at school, or didn’t understand it, or just didn’t care, and now the rest of us have to accept that there’s no word for “jealousy” any more. Coz the people is always right, innit? It’s this attitude that is really modern.
So many other examples. “To step foot on” springs to mind. Yes, yes, entirely correct, and logical (foot! step!), and probably already in the dictionary. But to me it will always be what it obviously is, really: a mishearing by a lot of people who never saw it in print because they don’t read.
I do understand the sentiment. I am a bit old and have seen words and phrases shift meanings in my lifetime and feel occasional irritation due to it (although I try to care less and less about it :)
I do find it harder to get worked up about a word that acquired additional meanings in the 14th century though - that ship has truly sailed :) Like who am I to school Mark Twain on the meaning of words.
I also find the ability of English to use the same word with different meanings and the power of context quite interesting (the fact that individual words exist in English with 100s of distinct meanings is really quite mind blowing.)
Ideas and concepts can sometimes be fuzzy as well with large overlaps, and insisting on too much specificity, precision and delineation in the language can be counterproductive to effective communication just as much as allowing too much flexibility can - but yeah, I guess there will always be some tension there and differences of opinion.
Language is often messy, but always fascinating. (And btw, I never said good or bad or right or wrong - I don’t feel it’s really my place to place such judgements)