Imagine the following situation: you are at a dinner party, or some other social gathering, and are explaining to a small child that Decemberthe twelfth month of the year, which is when holidays like Christmas and Hanukkah happen, when suddenly you are interrupted by someone who informs you that December in fact not the twelfth month of the year.
Many people complain when the word ‘awesome’ is used to describe things that are not truly amazing. However, few people object when the word ‘terrible’ is used with a meaning other than ‘full of horror’. Isn’t that very strange?
Since you are polite, you raise an eyebrow or two and ask for clarification. The person interrupts you obligingly and begins to explain his reasons: “see, the name December is named after the Latin word “December”. Decembermeans “ten” and doesn’t mean “twelve”, so it’s really the tenth month of the year…”
Most of us, it seems safe to assume, at this point will begin to slowly turn away from the madman with a rigid adherence to etymological honesty, making sure as we do as so that he doesn’t have any sharp objects in his hand, and if he does, make sure the aforementioned little child is placed between us and the said crazy man.
And yet, if the scenario is a little different—if one person is perhaps explaining to a small child the proper method for breaking up a tray of cupcakes, and the friend himself approaches and explains it , because it comes from a word that means “ten” in Latin (also December) is best used to refer to the removal of one-tenth of something, such as soldiers from a regiment, as a form of military punishment—in which case many of us seem to tend to nod and say “hmmm, you’ve got a point there.”
Why is this?
A possibility is a word like destroy most occupies a unique place in the English language, describing something that no other word can describe, and because of this peculiar connotation, some are determined to try to prevent the word from changing meaning. It would be nice if this was indeed the driving force behind correctors who use the wrong word formally like destroy mostif only for the alternative explanation we are flooded with linguists trying to impose a series of erratic and illogical rules on our use of language.
Have you ever said something like “kids these days use the word Great to describe things that are not, in fact, worthy scared, and boy, does it burn me”? There’s a good chance you have, as this is a very common complaint. Now, have you ever used the word terrible to describe something that is not, in fact, complete scared? There’s a good chance you have, as this is a very common way to use the word. Why is it considered unsuitable for use Great to refer to things like brunch, yet terrible for most people, an acceptable description of the meal that restaurants use to get rid of all their dying leftovers?
There have been a number of people who have voiced opposition to this sense of laxity. terrible over the years, but their rankings are dwindling and most of us don’t seem to mind using it very much. If you have given these conflicting views about Great And terrible, you don’t have to feel bad about it (and you probably don’t); one of the only things as completely illogical as the English language is the way most of us feel it should be used.
Ambrose Bierce, in the 1909 manual, Write correctlydeclare that dilapidated “cannot be used correctly for anything but a stone building,” on the grounds that “the word is of Latin origin lapis lazuli, a stone.” Despite Bierce’s advice, we seem to feel comfortable referring to construction with wood and other materials such as dilapidated. We are also completely free to mention something as great as Greatalthough the original meaning of the word was “just as the content of the fable is wondrous, unbelievable, absurd, extreme, exaggerated, or almost impossible,” and the word clearly comes from the root. Latin of old tree (“conversation, narrative, story, play, allegory”).
Some defenders of semantic purity have made the point that exacerbate should not be used in the sense of “to upset or anger”, as the previous meaning of the word was “to make the situation worse”. However, if we insist on a word keeping its original meaning, we will be stuck with just using exacerbate means “to weigh, or to burden”, as this is the meaning the word had in the first English (it comes from the Latin aggravātuspast participle of more serious“to burden, burden, oppress, make worse”).
Some of these changes, such as Great, creates a certain kind of meaning, and one can easily see how a word can go from meaning “like a parable” to “that’s really cool”. However, there are some other words in our language that have dissociated themselves from their origins in a seemingly inexplicable way (such as talentedcan be derived from the Latin plural for units of weight or money, talent).
About the fact that December derived from the word “ten”, but occupies a place that doesn’t quite fit this… well, hardly the only month that doesn’t match its origin. Septemberninth month of the year, derived from the Latin word for “seven” (bulkhead), October from October (“eight”), and November possibly derived from the Latin word for “nine” (novel). In the ancient Roman calendar (with 10 months), each of these months matched the number in its name. About 700 BC January And February was added, originally placed at the end of the year. When these two months are then brought to the top of the calendar, the previous four months become contrary to their origin.
When we looked at the ways people complained about the extended meanings of words like literally, dilapidated, terrible, exacerbateAnd talented (poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge hates the word), three things seem obvious:
1) Words often lose their roots 2) People will complain about this 3) The English language will survive somehow
Categories: Usage Notes
Source: vothisaucamau.edu.vn
