In typical established use blackmail is about a specific type of nasty behavior in which someone uses force or threat to take something from another person. It is a verb, and specifically a verb of the transitive type, which means that it is followed by a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase that completes the meaning of the sentence. a blackmailer anything else; people don’t simply blackmail.* Usually, people blackmail are extortion, but confessions and the like can also be blackmailed.
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Traditionally, what hasn’t been blackmailed are people. But we are increasingly seeing the word blackmail is used in a new way, with people being blackmailed as the object of the verb.
Here is an example of established usage:
Convinced that Harry the Dog cheated to win the baking contest, Mabel the Cat is determined to extort money from him.
And here’s an example of a newer usage:
Mabel the Cat is determined to blackmail Harry the Dog for the bounty.
It’s a subtle change, but it’s the kind of change in meaning that, if and when it’s fully established, warrants a new meaning in this dictionary.
Currently, the earliest evidence of use we’ve seen is from the 1988 medical horror film Fear of deathby Robin Cook:
Dawen crossed her arms on the table and looked straight at Jason. “We’re afraid you’ll blackmail us with this document—making us pay to get it back,” he said, touching the cover of the lab notebook.
However, actually in this century the usage has begun to become somewhat common:
Not excited? I hear you extort money from workers, why can’t I? — Collateral (screenplay), 2004
While the film’s purists will mock how it blends with the storyline by adding you to the role of a Corleone foot soldier, gamers will revel in the open-world environment where you spend Kill rivals and blackmail the local barber. — Marc Bernardin, Weekly entertainmentMarch 24, 2006
It now even appears in some rather formal settings:
If the Court overturns Hall, governments could bully, blackmail and defraud residents of other states with no legal retribution and no political accountability. – Editorial board, The Wall Street JournalJanuary 8, 2019
blackmail is an old word whose Latin genealogy includes the word torquemeaning “twist”—also the origin of torture. blackmail has been used in English since the 15th century, and in all the years its use has changed relatively little. It has developed softer aspects, with persuasion, argument and ingenuity combined with force, abuse, and intimidation as qualifying methods of extortion, but extortion has never been. is now the desired person or entity. Except that’s not entirely true: The Oxford English Dictionary reports an outdated meaning of blackmailis defined as “to blackmail (a person)” and is illustrated by three examples from 1561 to 1616, including one from 1612 by John Davies A discovery of the real reason why Ireland was never fully subjugated and submitted to the British crown until the beginning of Her Majesty’s happy reign: “they blackmailed and oppressed the people.”
Is the use we have observed in recent sources a conscious resurgence of older usage? Are not. There is no proof of that. what is more likely to be blackmail was simply pushed in a new direction by speakers of that language, perhaps with help from bribeis a common contextual counterparty and is subject to a bribed person or entity.
Will this new use of blackmail has been established enough to ensure that a new definition in this dictionary is still visible. But the current evidence shows it’s stabilizing in the language pretty well, thank you very much. And we see no force in the game.
- Note:
blackmail does not work as an absolute verb, as in phrases like “robbers and blackmailers.” Calling a verb “absolute” is a convenient way to say that although it is transitive, it has no object in some particular construction. Such designations are useful because grammatical rules and categories, unlike verbs, are rarely absolute.
Categories: Usage Notes
Source: vothisaucamau.edu.vn
