I thought this was an excellent take on the realities of a living language. From Garners Modern American Usage (with thanks again to Mike Lusk). Word-Swapping Its something like a Murphys Law of language: two words that can be confused will be confused. Sometimes, the more popular word will encroach on the less popular (as when demean took over the sense bemean [= to make base or low; degrade]). At other times, the less well-known word encroaches on the better-known one. The following pairs are illustrative: affect gets used for effect, bizarre for bazaar, comprise for compose, deprecate for depreciate, effete for elite, fortuitous for fortunate, luxurious for luxuriant, recant for recount, reticent for reluctant, vortex for vertex, and so on. How does this happen? Because people enjoy experimenting with words -- not going so far as to engage in true sesquipedality, but merely using slightly offbeat words that everyone has heard before -- theyll replace an expected word with one that strikes them as more genteel. And theyll do this without ever bothering to look the word up in a dictionary. In the old days, this psychological impulse probably didnt have a great effect on the language. But in an age of mass communications -- when millions of people can be simultaneously exposed to a barbarous error in speech -- the effect can be almost immediate. One speakers carelessness with the language spreads as never before. And because writing follows speech -- as it must -- these confusions, over time, get embedded in the language. The dictionaries record that infer sometimes means imply; that precipitous sometimes means precipitate (adj.); and that regretfully sometimes means regrettably. Its the lexicographers duty to record whats happening in the language; if various words are in flux, then the dictionaries will reflect it. Thats where a good dictionary of usage comes in: it helps people understand which words are worth continuing the struggle to preserve in their traditional senses; which words are all but lost in the short term (skunked terms); and which words, though once confused, have undergone semantic changes that cant be objected to any longer. In any given age, various sets of words belong at different places on that continuum. Rarely do the preservationists -- the ones who want to keep traditional distinctions -- prevail. Sometimes they do; more often they dont. But that doesnt mean the struggle is in vain. To the contrary: it means that these speakers and writers will be better equipped, among their contemporaries, to avoid stumbling and thrashing about in the language. Among astute listeners and readers, theyll have a higher degree of credibility. Theres much to be said for that.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 22:45:31 +0000
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