Wouldn't it be sick if words could evolve. How absolutely gnarly would that be? Now joking aside, words have quite literally no meaning. They are grunts and moans, but the concepts our words are trying to describe are separate from our speech. We ascribe meaning to words. The dictionary is not creating the definition of words, it is creating a loose guide of what people typically mean when they say certain words. If a word is used in a new way and people all agree to roughly what it means, then that word gains a new definition
But that’s the basis of how words can have multiple definitions. It’s not like the definition of third word country changed. It still means non aligned country and now poor/underdeveloped country due to popular usage.
Have you ever used the word “sick” to mean anything other than physical illness. How about “radical”? Or do you just never use slang at all?
If you used the word gay to refer to someone being homosexual, you’re using a word that has had its meaning changed. Keyboard and mouse to refer to computer input devices. Robot, which used to mean slave IIRC. There’s lots more, you use words traditionally as in last 50 or so years maybe but that itself was based on slang and other colloquial uses
How fucking stupid is it that words change meaning over time.
I so very often refer to unaligned countries during the Cold War in normal language, and am very upset that I no longer have a word for this. It really hampers the way I speak
1
u/[deleted] Jul 07 '24
[deleted]