Deprecate vs Depreciate - why I am right, and the rest of the computer industry is emphatically and consistently wrong. A blog or what you will... Since I was 4, my Grandmother used to play scrabble with me. This is back when Scrabble had more respect for the English language, e.g., proper names were not allowed, words from other languages not commonly used in English, etc. Every time she played a word she would ask me if I knew what it meant, and if I didnt, she made me look it up in this huge Oxford dictionary she had. Thing was like the Gutenberg bible. Im talking huge. You can imagine that when I started playing Scrabble with her this occurred quite frequently. At the time I was mostly annoyed, but now, I look back on her with enormous gratitude for instilling in me a decent vocabulary. Unfortunately, she also instilled in me a rather stuck-up prudish attitude towards incorrect use off the English language. Hey, I still make mistakes, but as soon as someone points it out to me or I realize what Ive done, I course correct. I dont keep repeating the same mistake because it suits me. Granted language evolves, e.g., google is now a verb, apparently. Through whats known as common use, it has earned its way into official dictionaries. However, google was a new word representing something heretofore non-existent in our speech. Common use does not cover blatantly changing the meaning of a word just because we didnt understand its definition in the first place, no matter how many people keep repeating it. Take deprecated, for example. The entire English-speaking computer industry uses it to mean some feature that is being phased out or no longer relevant. Not bad, just not recommended. Usually, because there is a new and better replacement. The actual definition of deprecate is to put down, or speak negatively about, or to express disapproval, or make fun of someone or something through degradation. It comes from Latin de- (against) precari (to pray). To pray against to a 21st century person probably conjures up thoughts of warding off evil spirits or something, which is probably where the disconnect occurs with people. In fact, to pray or to pray for something meant to wish good upon, to speak about in a positive way. To pray against would be to speak ill of or to put down or denigrate. See this excerpt from the Oxford English Dictionary. 1. Express disapproval of: (as adjective deprecating) he sniffed in a deprecating way 2. another term for depreciate ( sense 2). he deprecates the value of children’s television What people generally mean to convey when using deprecate, in the IT industry anyway, and perhaps others, is that something has lost value. Something has lost relevance. Something has fallen out of favor. Not that it has no value, it is just not as valuable as before (probably due to being replaced by something new.) We do have a word that means this in English and the word is depreciate. See this excerpt from the Oxford English Dictionary. 1. Diminish in value over a period of time: the pound is expected to depreciate against the dollar 2. Disparage or belittle (something): Notice that definition 2 sounds like deprecate. So, ironically, deprecate can mean depreciate in some contexts, just not the one commonly used by IT folk. It bugs me, it just bugs me. I dont know why. Maybe because I see it everywhere. In every computer book I read, every lecture I attend, and on every technical site on the internet, someone invariably drops the d-bomb sooner or later. If this one ends up in the dictionary at some point, I will concede, but conclude that the gatekeepers of the English lexicon have become weak and have lost their way... or at the very least, lost their nerve. Even Wikipedia espouses this misuse, and indeed, defends it. Ive already edited the page thrice, and they keep removing my edits. :D Thats it. Im done, and while Im sure there are grammatical mistakes in this soliloquy and a spelling error or two due to auto-correct or the fact that I dont type and have to look at the keys the whole time, my argument stands. Still, most people in my industry dont care. Where I see art, which is why I chose software engineering, they see only 1s and 0s. As someone remarked to me at the Openstack convention in Atlanta when I gave him this same speech, Irregardless, Im still going to keep saying deprecated. *sigh* - Jason OBrien (a.k.a. Snooty McSnobbypants) :P
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 22:10:11 +0000
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