Originally Posted By: rayc
You did type "...Words mean what they mean as they were first meant..." without any caveats or clarification.
Your words meant what you meant but they didn't mean that to others who didn't know the context you were placing them in when your typed them.
That context isn't clear in your text.
Your explanation is good & reasonable but the problem with the written word, even when "emojified", is that is means what the reader reads.


Yes, of course it is always as the reader understands it.

And thank you for your acknowledgement that my 'explanation' is good and reasonable.

But what about the context or clarification of those commenting that I was baldly wrong? Did they qualify their context ... or were they simply reacting to my other statement regarding the Standford's committee relegating 'grandfather' to naughty?

In any case, no post would ever be finished were we all required to provide the entire context and clarification of our thoughts expressed by words to every reader's satisfaction.

You have supplied some interesting etymology, and while no expert myself, I have some difficulties with your presentation with respect to how it relates to the meaning of words, as opposed to the origin.

You first mention that p.i.m.p. has changed its meaning. But in doing so you replace a noun, 'a p.i.m.p.' with with a verb, 'to p.i.m.p' or gerund, 'p.i.m.p.ing.' When the morning fish wrap reports "authorities arrested J. Edgar Hoosier, a local p.i.m.p.," we don't think he was p....mping his new line of fashion eyeglasses, do we?

Similarly with g.r.a.n.d.f.t.h.e.r (not sure what the censors are watching!), you provide the etymology of the word, but then you note a particular legal usage of the word, 'Grandfathered,' which means those enjoying certain extant rights/ privileges, are not subject to new legal regulation infringing upon pre-existing practice ... similar, but not equivalent, to prohibition of 'ex post facto' laws.

What you present is a particular and peculiar usage which may or may not creep into common parlance. As far as I can understand, grandfather has always meant what it first meant in the English language, regardless of whether or not it has acquired other usage.

So to return to the ex post facto cherry picking of canceling some words because somewhere in the past they were used in the service of discrimination or some ill deed real or imagined, is in my opinion the mental equivalent of the Taliban destroying the Bamyan Buddha statues.

Finally, please kindly provide me an example of an English word that no longer means what it originally meant. I do acknowledge that in the '60s some said, "Wow, that's really bad!," when acknowledging something they admired, but we all still know what bad means.


Last edited by DFT; 01/04/23 05:46 PM.
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