10 Words That Don’t Mean What You May Think They Do 10 Words That Don’t Mean What You May Think They Do By Mark Nichol As English evolves, word meanings shift and turn, sometimes reversing themselves altogether. These ten words have shifted their senses over the years. In some cases, we are wise to likewise be flexible; in others, we relax our vocabulary at the expense of useful distinctions: 1. Decimate The literal meaning of this word, as all you lovers of Latin (not to be confused with Latin lovers) know all too well, is “to reduce by one-tenth,” supposedly from the punitive custom of selecting one out of ten captives by lot and killing those so selected. But the senses for this rhadamanthine Roman policy have proliferated, so that now it means “tithed,” “drastically reduced,” or “destroyed” as well. 2. Disinterested Commonly employed to mean “not interested,” disinterested has a precise, useful meaning of “neutral, unbiased.” 3.

Enormity Some people would reserve this word to mean “monstrously wicked,” but, in truth, it is properly invoked to refer to anything overwhelming or an unexpected event of great magnitude, and thus it need not be invariably corrected to enormousness except when it is clearly in reference to a loathsome occurrence. Refrain, however, from diluting the word’s impact in such usage as “The enormity of the new stadium struck them as they approached the towering entrance.” 4. Fortuitous This word means “occurring by chance,” but its resemblance to fortune has given it an adopted sense of “lucky.” For meticulous adherence to the traditional meaning, use fortuitous only in the sense indicated in this sentence: “His arrival at that moment was fortuitous, because her note had not specified the exact time of her departure.” Nothing in the context qualifies his arrival as fortunate; the sentence merely states that he arrived in time without knowing that he would do so. The informal meaning is expressed here: “His fortuitous arrival at that very moment enabled him to intercept the incriminating letter.” In this sentence, the time of his appearance is identified as a lucky stroke. 5.

Fulsome This term originally meant “abundant, generous, full,” but that sense was rendered obsolete when the word acquired a negative connotation of “offensive, excessive, effusive.” Conservative descriptivists rail against the use of fulsome in a positive sense, but the cold, hard fact is that this sense has been increasingly resurgent for many years, and the adulatory meaning is now much more common than the condemnatory one. If you wish to stand fast before the tsunami of inevitability, be my guest, but fulsome as an exquisite insult has been consigned to the dustbin of history. Some commentators recommend that because of the word’s ambiguity, it’s best to avoid its use altogether. If you insist, make sure the context is clear. 6. Ironic The impact of ironic has been diluted because many people use it to mean “coincidental,” when its traditional definition is “counter to expectations or what is appropriate.” 7. Literally Some folks get exercised when this term is used in place of its antonym, figuratively. However, in a hyperbolic sense, that meaning is justified. Unfortunately, that sense is literally overused. 8.

Notorious This term is occasionally used in a neutral sense, but that’s not an error, but the word literally means “known.” However, its dominant connotation is that the fame is a result of infamy. 9. Peruse This victim of definition reversal literally means “to use thoroughly,” and its first sense is that of careful steady or attentive reading. However, many writers (myself included) have employed it as a synonym for scan — enough writers, as a matter of fact, that its second sense is “to look over or through in a casual or cursory manner.” Unfortunately, these mirror meanings mean that if you use the word, I advise you to support it with context that clarifies the intended sense. 10. Plethora Plethora originally referred to an excess of something, but that usage is rare now, and more often the sense is simply of abundance. The medical meaning of swelling caused by an excess of blood is all but unknown. Subscribe to Receive our Articles and Exercises via Email You will improve your English in only 5 minutes per day, guaranteed! Subscribers get access to our exercise archives, writing courses, writing jobs and much more! You'll also get three bonus ebooks completely free!

51 Responses to “10 Words That Don’t Mean What You May Think They Do” TJ on May 10, 2011 1:01 am Seems you’ve used “scan” in place of “skim.” Walter Smith on May 10, 2011 9:39 am A word that I commonly hear my friend’s and colleagues use to describe being drunk, belligerent, means to be hostile or warlike. It certainly makes me belligerent to hear them use it in such a manner. Jamaipanese on May 10, 2011 12:22 pm I can literally feel my vocabulary expanding… Nelida K. on May 10, 2011 1:11 pm Hi Maeve, Splendid post, as usual. However, I believe that under item 8. there is one “but” in excess. Perhaps the second one could be replaced by “as” or “because”? shirley in berkeley on May 10, 2011 2:11 pm Shall we talk about “reticent” and “reluctant”?

It drives me nuts that people say “reticent” when they mean “reluctant.” RETICENT ( adj.): 1. Inclined to keep one’s thoughts, feelings, and personal affairs to oneself. See Synonyms at silent. 2. Restrained or reserved in style. RELUCTANT (adj.): Unwilling; disinclined: reluctant to help. Exhibiting or marked by unwillingness: a reluctant smile. Offering resistance; opposing. One may be reluctant to speak, but not reticent to speak (redundant), and no one was ever reticent to play football. Terry A McNeil on May 10, 2011 3:45 pm In short, this post in my view touches on one of the most important concerns of language and communication. Indeed I believe it has an enormous impact in all areas of human concern. This is because the meaning of words literally lends itself to endless discussions and constructs. For example, how many meanings might the words economics or home have beyond their respective dictionary entries. The idea that there are millions of picture meanings resting in our individual minds for each of these words is a valid view in my experience.

Making it easy to understand why we do not often see eye to eye. Explaining also why life is often a wonderful conflicting conundrum and more. Terry TIME…For our Best Deeds and Words. Catherine on May 10, 2011 4:19 pm My pet-peeve-diluted-word is “anxious”. It used to mean “fearful” and was similar to a feeling of dread. Its root is, after all, “anxiety”! But today “anxious” can also mean “eager” as in: “I’m anxious for Christmas morning to finally arrive!” So, I always ask what about Christmas morning produces a sense of dread to make the speaker fearful. (I can’t help it!) Maeve Steve Vaudrey on May 11, 2011 12:42 am Another word for the list might be “myriad.” Meaning 10,000, it is comonly used to describe a very large or indefinite number. Andy Knoedler on May 11, 2011 4:37 am Might I add the misuse of “bemused”?

Some writers think it’s a synonym of amused, whereas it really means confused. Peter on May 11, 2011 10:20 am Do you read xkcd, Mark? Regarding “literally”: (be sure to read the popup text that appears when you hover your mouse over the picture, too…) Mark Nichol on May 11, 2011 2:05 pm Peter: Thanks for the tip about xkcd — I’d never known about it before. I figuratively fell out of my seat! kls on May 11, 2011 2:31 pm Reluctant/reticent Shirley in Berkeley, I’m with you in Minnesota! I’m not reluctant to be anything but reticent about the misuse of those words. Another annoyance is “o-MAHJ.” What an affectation! Good, old “HOM-aj” works just fine. Someday somebody will say, “I’m not reticent to pay him o-MAHJ” and I will go stark raving.

JMN on May 11, 2011 3:16 pm I think the word nonplussed should make the next list. I don’t have anything more to say about it. venqax on May 11, 2011 4:10 pm Excellent and timley topic. A few mis-mots I hear all the time: The guy behind the mirrors in the meat section of the supermarket is not a butcher. He is a meat-cutter. Nothing is being slaughtered back there, we hope. Someone who shoes horses nowadays is not necessarily, or even probably, a blacksmith. Someone who makes iron things, like frying pans, fireplace pokers, and maybe horse shoes is. A farrier takes care of horsey foot-things more generally. A chef (French of “chief”) is a master of culinary arts who oversees (hence chief) cooks and food preparers. Just having the funny hat, or even getting paid for what you cook-up doesn’t get you that title. An authority on snakes is a herpetologist, but so is an expert on tuataras. A snake expert is, more precisely, an ophiologist. Best to say what you mean.

Coroners don’t cut up dead bodies. Medicals examiners (ME’s) do. ME’s are physicians, tho their connection to the healing arts is indirect. A coroner is a legal official who certifies that someone is, indeed, officially and completely dead and why (usually with the ME’s advice). No one is a linguist simply because they speak a lot of languages. They may be a polyglot. A linguist, as many on here, is someone who practices the science of linguistics and uses those funny IPA symbols and using words like alveolar, fricative, epiglottal and obstruents. You don’t need to actually speak different languages to do that, but it helps. You don’t have to know that stuff to speak different languages. It might even be an impediment. Laurie on May 11, 2011 5:54 pm I can pretty much guarantee that “voluptuous” does not mean what you think it does. Go ahead! Look it up!! Grace on May 12, 2011 8:42 am I’d like to plead for ‘enormity’.

According to my OED (admittedly the 1983 edition) ‘Excess in magnitude’ is ‘an incorrect use’. The correct uses? ‘1. Deviation from a normal standard or type; esp. from moral or legal rectitude. In later use: Monstrous wickedness. 2. That which is abnormal; an irregularity; a crime; in later use, a monstrous offence. Maybe a newer edition of the OED has overridden those ‘later uses’, and accepted largeness of size to be the new ‘later use’; and yes, of course language changes and grows… but this time it is shrinking. Both enormity and enormous started out meaning ‘abnormal’ – (ex+norma – outside+pattern). ‘Enormous’ came to be applied only to size – to hugeness. My plea to writers is to keep the distinction of ‘enormity’ and not permit it to become a synonym of enormous. There are many words to express the vast scale, the huge magnitude of big stuff.

But there are few enough words left that can adequately convey the monstrous evil of some of the things that go on in the world today, an observation I remember being made by journalists after 9/11, when words like ‘terrible’, ‘tragedy’, ‘horror’ and ‘disaster’ seemed too banal. Cecily on May 12, 2011 10:20 am A familiar list of words, but I’m more intrigued by the title of the post, and specifically the present tense. Yes, originally “decimate” meant to destroy one tenth, but if 95% of native English speakers think it refers to widespread destruction, in what sense can we say it “means” (rather than “meant”) one tenth? On that basis, we would also say that “nice pedant” means “stupid schoolmaster” (for that is what those words used to mean) and rejig the calendar so that September, October, November and December become the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months. Regardless of our nostalgia, etymology alone, fascinating as it is, is not a reliable guide to current meanings.

venqax on May 12, 2011 3:09 pm Excellent and timely topic. A few mis-mots I hear all the time: The guy behind the mirrors in the meat section of the supermarket is not a butcher. He is a meat-cutter. Nothing is being slaughtered back there, we hope. Someone who shoes horses nowadays is not necessarily, or even probably, a blacksmith. Someone who makes iron things, like frying pans, fireplace pokers, and maybe horse shoes is. A farrier takes care of horsey foot-things more generally. A chef (French of “chief”) is a master of culinary arts who oversees (hence chief) cooks and food preparers. Just having the funny hat, or even getting paid for what you cook-up doesn’t get you that title. An authority on snakes is a herpetologist, but so is an expert on tuataras. A snake expert is, more precisely, an ophiologist. Best to say what you mean. Coroners don’t cut up dead bodies. Medicals examiners (ME’s) do. They are physicians, tho their connection to the healing arts is indirect.

A coroner is a legal official who certifies that someone is, indeed, officially and completely dead and why (usually with the ME’s advice). No one is a linguist simply because they speak a lot of languages. They may be a polyglot. A linguist, as some on here, is someone who practices the science of linguistics and who uses those funny IPA symbols and words like alveolar, fricative, epiglottal and obstruents. You don’t need to actually speak different languages to do that, but it helps. And, you don’t have to know that stuff to speak different languages. It might even be an impediment. Gaby on May 13, 2011 7:54 am The members of my book club have a long-running debate about the meaning of “enormity” and this post caused great controversy. I’m going to post the contribution of one of our members who quotes a couple of sources to demonstrate that the correct use of enormity is indeed to mean monstrous wickedness rather than great size: “OED lists the use of enormity to mean size as obsolete: Excess in magnitude; hugeness, vastness.

Obs.; recent examples might perh. be found, but the use is now regarded as incorrect. (Oxford English Dictionary) My original source was Elements of Style (Strunk and White). They maintain in their section on misused words and expressions that enormity is “misleading, if not wrong, when used to express bigness.” According to them enormity should be used “only in the sense ‘monstrous wickedness’.” shilrey in berkeley on May 13, 2011 11:55 am Thinking about the claims that “correct” usage of language is snobbish, defending incorrect usage and pronunciation fails to honor the elegance of English. The meanings and pronunciation of words change over time, but the language is poorer if we muddle and confuse words because we ignore distinctions between them. There’s a delicious feel in the mouth and a pleasurable sound to the ear when words are pronounced with elegance and style. Consider the difference between “museum” (three syllables) and “muzeem” (two).

And how about aesthetic (say that “th”) shilrey in berkeley on May 13, 2011 12:01 pm What I was about to say before I was interrupted by touchy Mac mouse ……… And how about “aesthetic”? Please do keep that “th”! Definitely unaesthetic to change the “th” to a double “t.” shilrey in berkeley on May 13, 2011 3:43 pm Hi, Moderator — Nothing like misspelling your own name. I’m shirley in berkeley, not shilrey!! (and very red in the face!). venqax on May 15, 2011 5:07 pm Excellent and timely topic. A few mis-mots I hear all the time: The guy behind the mirrors in the meat section of the supermarket is not a butcher. He is a meat-cutter. Nothing is being slaughtered back there, we hope. Someone who shoes horses nowadays is not necessarily, or even probably, a blacksmith. Someone who makes iron things, like frying pans, fireplace pokers, and maybe horse shoes is.

A farrier takes care of horsey foot-things more generally. A chef (French of “chief”) is a master of culinary arts who oversees (hence chief) cooks and food preparers. Just having the funny hat, or even getting paid for what you cook-up doesn’t get you that title. An authority on snakes is a herpetologist, but so is an expert on tuataras. A snake expert is, more precisely, an ophiologist. Best to say what you mean. Coroners don’t cut up dead bodies. Medicals examiners (ME’s) do. They are physicians, tho their connection to the healing arts is indirect. A coroner is a legal official who certifies that someone is, indeed, officially and completely dead and why (usually with the ME’s advice). No one is a linguist simply because they speak a lot of languages. They may be a polyglot. A linguist, as many on here, is someone who practices the science of linguistics and uses those funny IPA symbols and using words like alveolar, fricative, epiglottal and obstruents. You don’t need to actually speak different languages to do that, but it helps.

You don’t have to know that stuff to speak different languages. It might even be an impediment. venqax on May 16, 2011 10:07 pm Apologies for the double post. @ Cecily, I think the point is that these are words that are currently being misused and that failure to preserve their now-proper distinct, discrete and unique meanings out of nothing but deaf ignorance, denigrates the language and should be argued against. Decimate means to reduce by a tenth No other word means that. None. That is worth preserving. OTOH we have a whole bag of muddier words that mean destroy, reduce, etc. That is certainly worth pointing out to the erudite who at least care about things like language, culture, etc. Mob-rule and ignorance govern plenty, and always will. No need to sing their praises. There will always be those who pound nails with shoes, the flats of wrenches and the knob ends of screwdrivers because they are too lazy to go get a hammer. So, get rid of hammers?

Cecily on May 17, 2011 5:39 am Venqax, I agree the original meaning of “decimate” is a loss (even though I struggle to think of many occasions where I need it), but almost everyone uses the word with the newer meaning; the battle was lost long ago. I don’t sing the praises of mob rule, as you put it, but I am a realist. Imam Baksh on May 19, 2011 12:14 am IRONICALLY, I think you misused ‘scan’ in your section on peruse. I understand that we have given in to the ‘tsunami’ on this one and it generally is taken to mean, casually look, but it once meant to take a detailed and systematic look. It still does, which is why we talk about CAT scans in medicine. or scan the horizon in military lore. mg on May 19, 2011 5:34 pm A whole lot of confusion here (in the comments, especially) about how language works and where it comes from.

Anyway, the nice thing about prescriptive crap like this is how easy it is to take down a notch. Here are the dates of the first uses of each of these words for their ‘incorrect’ meanings, according to the OED: Decimate: 1663 Disinterested: 1767 Enormity: 1792 (OED notes “recent examples might perh. be found, but the use is now regarded as incorrect,” due, of course, to people like you.) Fortuitous: [not regarded by the OED as a separate sense] Fulsome: The discussion here seems accurate. Not sure what the hell a “conservative descriptivist” is, since that’s a contradiction of terms; your blog post is the top hit for “conservative descriptivist” on Google. You seem confused about what a “descriptivist” is, perhaps. Ironic: No argument here. Literally: No argument here. Notorious: neutral use: 1495; negative use: 1549. Perusal: OED note: “Modern dictionaries and usage guides, perh.

influenced by the word’s earlier history in English, have sometimes claimed that the only ‘correct’ usage is in reference to reading closely or thoroughly (cf. senses 4a, 4b). However, peruse has been a broad synonym for read since the 16th cent., encompassing both careful and cursory reading; Johnson defined and used it as such. The implication of leisureliness, cursoriness, or haste is therefore not a recent development, although it is usually found in less formal contexts and is less frequent in earlier use (see quot. 1589 for an early example). The specific sense of browsing or skimming emerged relatively recently, generally in ironic or humorous inversion of the formal sense of thoroughness. Cf. scan v. for a similar development and range of senses. Plethora: ~1868 (it is difficult to figure out exactly from the limited context given from OED examples). Chris on May 30, 2011 4:12 am Most of the time when I see someone say “Wow, that’s ironic,” I think “Wow, not it’s not.” It’s becoming worse than people misusing then/than.

jessiethought on June 18, 2011 6:54 pm Knew disinterested. Not decimate or fortuitous. Now I can better understand the usage of “fortuitous” in the Odyssey and such works. venqax on June 27, 2011 4:53 pm @mg: Yes, I would say confusion. What, exactly, are we supposed to infer from your list? That if a mistake is old, it’s not a mistake? That there is no useful reason to distinguish between different words that may have been used to mean the same thing—most likely by people who didn’t know any better? That with English, any prescription is merely pedantry? So it is somehow good and proper that fortuitous means the same thing as fortunate? There is no distinction between uninterested and disinterested? Enormity means enormousness because it sounds like it does? Notorious is the same as famous because we don’t need a word that makes the distinction intended by that prescriptive distinction? Your own bewilderment at the “contradiction in terms” of a “conservative descriptivist” testifies to the indefensibility of your position.

How a can anything be a contradiction in terms if terms don’t have any definite meaning? Doesn’t the fact that Google—the final arbiter of all things descriptive—pulls up the term and identifies it with this blog in fact MAKE this blog “conservative descriptivist”, ipso facto, in your realm? Then you proceed to stamp with approval the taggings of misuse on ironic and literally. Why? They’ve certainly been used to mean what they don’t mean a lot and for a long time. Why don’t they get excused as stand-ins? Something has certainly been taken down a notch. Clarity and consistency for a pair. What is different today from the 1600s and before is that there is a large, literate class who DO take care with the language and who seek— in their best efforts—to manage its development somewhat. Likewise the geneticists who aren’t going to leave us to natural evolution any longer, if they can help it. When the literate do this among themselves, it does have some trickle-down imprint and it can be done beneficently, not just pedantically.

For example, when there is a benefit to communication in 2 words meaning 2 things, instead of 2 or more superficially similar words meaning the same thing— a redundancy that serves no purpose at all. Or when there actually is a common rule of spelling or pronunciation that, if only taught and known, would remove much confusion. Not all rules are simply oppression or snobbishness These are good things for English. Bob on September 11, 2011 1:22 am @venqax – I think you missed the point of ag’s ( admittedly acerbic) post. If a misuse is as old as Shakespeare and Samuel Johnson, and it has been used by reasonably educated people for over a couple centuries, we may need to reconsider our definition of “misuse.” What you do not acknowledge is that quite a few of your “distinctions” were of little importance historically to most writers of English (even well-educated ones) until certain movements, in particular the classics revival of the late nineteenth century, suddenly decided to try to retrofit modern English into dead languages (particularly Latin and Greek).

That doesn’t mean that these Classicists were “wrong,” but it does mean that they made up distinctions between “correct” and “incorrect” usage where there often was none or even where their “correct” usage went against already established trends. I used to think like you, and there is some part of me that still winces at supposedly “incorrect” usages. But in many of the cases you bring up here, the battle wasn’t lost long ago… There actually never was a “battle” until people like you started making up arbitrary rules. You may think they aren’t arbitrary, but why exactly is the first usage in English more correct, even when it has coexisted with another use for most of it’s lifespan in English? Why is a usage based on a dead language considered correct, even if it goes against the use of almost all speakers and many good writers of the language the word is actually part of? (“Decimate” is not Latin. It isn’t “decimatio” and we need to consider 400 years of English usage before necessarily yielding to the authority of some dead usage in a dead language.) I’m not saying you’re wrong.

I’m not saying your arguments about reducing redundancy or clarity in language aren’t noble, but the idea that they are based in some authoritative “correct” or “original” or even “lost” usage is misguided based on the same historical record you seek to draw from… At least in many instances. That’s the important point from the previous commenter. You can be prescriptivist all you want, but take care to note when your decisions are based on actual historical English usage versus some imagined Garden of Eden where no one split infinitives and everyone always used the subjunctive correctly. Bob on September 11, 2011 1:26 am By the way… Apologies for a typo of it’s for its. The damn phone I just started using corrects “its” to “it’s” by default, and I couldn’t scrollback to proofread before submitting. venqax on September 24, 2011 7:59 pm Bob, your point is well taken, but you are assuming I am making more assertions that I am. I am not suggesting that Will or SJohnson misused the words in question.

I’m merely saying that the fact that the words could be used in that sense THEN does nothing to justify that use for them now. It is, in fact, ag who appealing to age and hisory as an overwhelming source of legitimacy. True, the distinction may not have important historically, and so were not made But they have BECOME important since then, and very useful. Regardless of whence the distinctions came between, say, uninterested and disinterested, they are useful distinctions now and should be observed by careful and conscientious, and certainly by professional, writers for that reason alone. The “wrongness” of their confusion that the anarachist ag was responding to was not simply invented by the author the post. It reflects a strong consensus that has developed among various “language people” for good reasons. We can say, for all intents and purposes, when reformers—including classicists—were right and when they were wrong. They were wrong when their reforms did nothing to aid communication, such as asserting pseudo-proper spellings with silent letters onto straightforward phonetic spellings in English, due to some completely unfounded notion that Latin spelling conventions were somehow relevant, let alone preferable, to English ones.

Likewise imposing Latin grammar rules on English for no defensible reason. They were right when the distinctions they made improved clarity and precision. I am not saying decimate should really only mean “reduced by a tenth”, but I am saying it is good and proper to say to decimate does not mean to annihilate or to destroy totally. It means to destroy relatively little of something. THAT is a very valuable distinction. Not all prescription needs to even claim that it is based in history, merely that it is a “best use” can be sufficient. venqax on September 25, 2011 4:10 pm and I’ve no idea why these posts keeping coming out italics. waitaminute on October 01, 2011 5:14 pm The way most people use word #6 on this list is ironic, wouldn’t you say? venqax on October 10, 2011 6:00 pm waitaminute: Only if they are talking about grammar, or the meaning of irony. Otherwise it’s just plain wrong (usually). Your comment may well be ironic, tho, given all that.

Betti on January 04, 2012 11:32 am I have just realised that I may have done someone an injustice… He had offered to act as a writing mentor, but in reply to my first email to him he said “Thank you for your fulsome email…” I looked up the word ‘fulsome’ in my (clearly too old) dictionary as I wasn’t entirely sure of its meaning. As a result I was slightly wary of him and his opinion of me henceforth, thinking that his remark had been a backhanded criticism, when – I now realise – it was probably no such thing. Things never quite worked out between us and we are no longer in contact. 😮 Stuart on February 10, 2012 12:00 pm “Conservative descriptivists rail ” Surely you mean “prescriptivists”? Descriptivists — which include most modern linguists — describe English as it is; prescriptivists prescribe how they believe it ought to be. Please try to avoid what is known as the “etymological fallacy”. The literal meaning of a word in Latin is not the literal meaning of that same word as used in modern English.

Brimshack on March 21, 2012 11:01 pm Number 1 would appear to be an etymological fallacy. As to the others, there is simply a point at which the common usage becomes the new meaning. Simply put, if enough people think a word has a certain meaning, then it does. David Moberg on April 11, 2012 3:03 pm The worst “drift” of meaning of a word, in my opinion, is the way the word “apocalypse” is used today to mean “the end of the world” or “absolute destruction”. The original, and correct meaning was from the Greek “apokálypsis”, which would translate to: “revelation”. Stephen Winbaum on April 16, 2012 4:58 pm ZEN is a monastic order of Buddhism exported by Dogen from China to Japan. Its central practice revolves around hours of meditation (Zazen), begging for alms, and contemplation of puzzling questions (Koans). The final transcendent state is called Satori. Now Zen is primarily a marketing term to describe a state of ease.

Shama Hyder Kabani’s “the zen of social media marketing” is the latest adaptation. I guess I need to be a little more Zen about it. Riccardo on April 18, 2012 7:39 pm Before it started being used almost exclusively to refer to Nazi genocide, “holocaust” could mean an extreme conflagration. Before traffic reporters suggesting alternative routes began misusing and redefining it, “alternate” meant either “every other” (adjective) or “occurring in turn repeatedly” (verb). Before ignorant show-offs thought it was a highfalutin encomium, “penultimate” only meant “next to last.” venqax on April 23, 2012 1:39 am And gay used to just mean happy or carefree. The only way to stop perfectly good words from being pirated is to refuse to play along, and do everything you CAN, which may not be much, to block others from abusing their priviliges of language.

Kavafy on May 04, 2012 10:38 am “I’m merely saying that the fact that the words could be used in that sense THEN does nothing to justify that use for them now.” So what WOULD justify their use now? It seems to me that, in the absence of popular consensus, these distinctions amount to little more than personal preference. venqax on May 04, 2012 10:36 pm So what WOULD justify their use now? The way they are used now, obviously. The fact that Shakespeare,e.g., used a word to mean something “then” doesn’t mean that it works anymore. Nice no longer means stupid and foolish, and no one thinks it does. Apple does not mean any kind of fruit in general anymore. And no one uses it that way. Of course you can exercise your personal preference and ask for an apple when you want an orange or a peach. Or in a stern tone tell someone his idiotic behavior is very nice. But it probably won’t work out that well for you. tems on October 16, 2012 4:09 am How about the word “though” ?

Did it evolve to another meaning? Here’s a couple of sentences that a friend got from a book (I don’t know exactly which book): “People refer to the study of animals as zoology. As they work THOUGH, zoologists take many different approaches to studying animals.” and “People visiting lakes can typically see frogs, toads, turtles, lizards and even snakes. These animals are not identical THOUGH, as biologists have classified them separately.” It seems that the word “though” here is not used to oppose two ideas, as it is defined in dictionaries. venqax on November 29, 2012 3:28 pm tems: in the second example I think the definition of though (although) as “despite the fact” is being expanded to “despite what you might think”. E.g. “I’m leaving now”, she said. “You’re not finished, though”, he replied. That is informal or colloquial and probably hasn’t been recorded in all dictionaries. In the first case, the word though is simply misused as it doesn’t contrast anything at all, as you pointed out.

There is no comparison implied by the facts that the field is called zoology and its practitioners operate in a variety of ways. db on December 17, 2013 6:47 pm What I love about English as a language is that by its very nature the words are malleable. While I can appreciate any opportunity taken to express some sense of superiority over people “misusing” the language, I think we should stick to the grammatical foibles as opposed to constraining the definitions of words. Of course that just may be because I have a habit of becoming super excited when I can stretch the meaning of a word in an unobvious direction. Although I think it is more a situation of the limitations of the language itself. There are foreign words that describe things where there are no English equivalents. It is within these gaps where we must ply our cultural slang into new ways of expressing ourselves. Eventually the definitions will change, and even words that are not part of the “accepted” vernacular make it into the dictionary. While I enjoyed the read, the argument is moot.

Words that have literally changed meaning through the years - Mirror Online Quite literally on fire: Wayne Rooney (Photo: Christopher Lee - The FA) Share Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email When it comes to expressing ourselves, the world has been getting it wrong for hundreds of years... literally. The word “literally” means “in a literal way or sense” but, to the fury of language purists, many people now use it simply to stress a point. Football pundit Jamie Redknapp once told us Wayne Rooney was playing so well he was “literally on fire”, while Deputy PM Nick Clegg said low-rate taxpayers were “literally living in a different galaxy”. But our misuse has become so common the Oxford English Dictionary has altered its definition to say it can be “used for emphasis rather than being actually true, such as, ‘We were literally killing ourselves laughing’.” Senior OED editor Fiona McPherson said: “Our job is to describe the language people are using. "Words have changed their meaning ever since the first word was uttered.

"Meat used to mean all food, but now its sense has narrowed.” So which other words have we got wrong for so long they are now right? ABANDON We use the word to mean “give up completely”, like abandoning hope, abandoning a baby or surrendering ourselves to emotion. But in 14th century Middle English it meant “to subjugate or subdue” someone or something – coming from the French phrase “mettre a bandon” meaning “to give up to a public ban”. ADDICT In Roman times addicts were broke folk given as slaves to the people they owed money to. It comes from the Latin addictus, which meant “a debtor awarded as a slave to his creditor”. In the 1600s it was used in the sense of giving yourself to someone or some practice. Only in the early 1900s did it become associated with dependency on morphine and later other drugs. ASSASSIN Far from Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s highly charged characters in 2005 action flick Mr and Mrs Smith, it seems “assassin” is the Arabic word for “hashish eater” – because warriors used to get doped up.

At the time of the Crusades, fanatics were sent by their sheikh to murder Christian leaders. An explanation from 1860 says: “The assassins, before they attacked an enemy, would intoxicate themselves with a powder made of hemp leaves, out of which they prepared an inebriating electuary, called hashish.” AWFUL In the 1300s it originally meant “inspiring wonder” and was a short version of “full of awe”. But now the word has purely negative connotations. BIMBO From “bambino”, the Italian word for “little child”, it once meant “fellow, chap or one of the boys” in theatrical circles. By the 1900s it had come to mean a “stupid, inconsequential man or contemptible person”. In 1920s America through the pages of Variety magazine, it meant an immoral woman or “floozie”. Then it reappeared in the 1980s during US political scandals, with other versions such as “bimbette” and a male form “himbo” – taking it full circle.

BROADCAST It may now be the way the BBC spreads the news, but in 1767 “broadcast” meant sowing seeds with a sweeping movement of the hand or a “broad cast”. Its media use began with radio in 1922. BULLY Referring to someone as a bully in the 16th century was like calling them “darling” or “sweetheart” – probably from the Dutch word “boel”, meaning lover or brother. But the meaning deteriorated in the 17th century through “fine fellow” and “blusterer”, to “harasser of the weak”. However, an American slang term of the 1860s, “bully for you”, gave the word a more positive sense again. CUTE Cute was a shortened form of acute, meaning “keenly perceptive and shrewd” in the 1730s. But by the 1830s it was part of American student slang, meaning “pretty, charming and dainty”. And, bizarrely, the original sense of “dainty” was “worthy and substantial”.

DECIMATE We use the term to mean “totally destroy” but the original definition was “to kill one in 10”. The brutal practice was used by the Roman army in the fifth century BC as a way to inspire fear and loyalty. Lots were drawn and one out of every 10 soldiers would be killed by their own comrades. If one member of a squad acted up, anybody could pay the ultimate price. FANTASTIC If you’re thinking of telling your beloved how fantastic they look today, think again. Unless, that is, they look like a Hobbit or an Avatar (whatever floats your boat). The 14th century meaning is “existing only in imagination”, from the old French term “fantastique”. It was not until 1938 that the word was first used to mean “wonderful or marvellous”. GARBLE Garble originally meant to sort something out – not to mess it up. It comes from a 15th century Anglo-French word “garbeler”, meaning “to sift” and the Arabic “gharbala” which meant sifting and selecting spices.

It changed in the 1680s and was instead used to describe mixed up, confused or distorted language. GAY Back in the 13th century the word meant “light-hearted” or “joyous” and a century later it meant “bright and showy”. But in the 1630s it acquired connotations of immorality with the term “Gay woman” meaning prostitute or “gay house” a brothel. It was first used to refer to homosexuality in the 1930s. HUSBAND The Old German words “hus” and “bunda” mean “house” and “owner”. “Husband” originally had nothing to do with marital status at all, except that home ownership made husbands extremely desirable marriage partners in the 13th century. The slang shortening it to “hubby” was first used in the 1680s. MATRIX You may be thinking of Keanu Reeves in his 1999 hit sci-fi movie. But in reality “matrix” comes from the 14th century French word meaning “pregnant animal”. It went on to mean “womb or source”.

Eventually in 1555 it was adapted to mean “a place where something is developed”. NERVOUS In the 1400s a nervous person was actually “sinewy and vigorous” – as the Latin word nervus applied to both sinews and nerves. By 1665 nerves were better understood and by 1734 the term meant “suffering a disorder of the nervous system”. By 1740 it meant “restless, agitated, lacking nerve” and it then became a widespread euphemism for mental illness – forcing the medical community to coin “neurological” to replace it in the older sense. “Nervous wreck” was first used in 1899. NICE Derived from the Latin nescius meaning “ignorant”, the word began life in the 14th century as a term for “foolish” or “silly”. It soon embraced bad qualities, such as wantonness, extravagance, cowardice and sloth. In the Middle Ages it took on the more neutral attributes of shyness and reserve.

Society’s admiration of such qualities in the 18th century brought on the more positively charged meanings of “nice” we know today. Like us on Facebook Most Read Most Recent Most Read Most Recent

Question: What word orginally meant "to destroy 1/10th of" but has now come to mean "to destroy almost completely"?
Answer: Decimate