By FRED KRONER
fred@mahometnews.com
Words.
They are with us every day, whether we are reading, writing, speaking or listening.
There are nearly 172,500 currently in use, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, with another 47,000-plus considered obsolete.
More words officially get added every year. In September, Merriam-Webster announced 840 new additions to its growing publication.
Biohacking is now a thing.
So is a term my friends and I used in the 1970s as we tracked baseball statistics and calculated how many “ribbies” our favorite players had for a season or a career. We never knew we were onto something that 50 years later would be recognized as an actual word. I’m sure we weren’t the first to use ribbies instead of the acronym RBI.
There’s no listing, however, for the number of words that no longer mean what they used to.
I remember when a mouse was something you needed to trap, not something to move around with your hand.
I guess in a sense, it’s possible to consider the mouse next to a computer as trapped when a hand encompasses it fully.
Then there’s gay.
In my youth, people would use the word to refer to someone as happy and gay. They were virtual synonyms and the word usage had nothing to do with sexual orientation.
A literal translation meant “merry.” Now, that is no longer the No. 1 description for the word gay.
How did it happen that the meaning of words shift, and who has the authority to say that a word which meant one thing in 1960 will mean something totally different 50 years later?
Can’t we come up with a new word instead of recycling ones already in use?
Is it any wonder that the older generation believes it’s difficult to communicate with the younger generation?
They speak the same language, sometimes using familiar words, but the intent is different.
It’s understandable that students are no longer graded in the same areas where their ancestors were a couple generations in the past.
Technology makes that a requirement.
Looking through some family papers, I discovered a grade school report card for my mother.
One of the categories where grades were issued was called deportment.
Who even knows what that word even means today? I doubt if I have written or spoken that word in a quarter century, until now.
Just maybe there would be fewer honor roll students these days if deportment was a point of emphasis. Or, maybe there would be an increase in civility throughout the country.
Someone, though, probably thinks deportment is what is done to undocumented immigrants.
Sometimes, words change meaning as they become associated with acronyms.
In my early sportswriting days, if someone was referred to as a goat in an athletic contest, it specifically meant that he (or she) did something at a key time to prevent a team from winning.
It was, of course, not good to be a goat.
It would be used in a context such as this: “The visiting team’s shortstop was the goat in the bottom of the ninth when he let a ground ball slide between his legs with two outs as the winning run scored from third base.”
Any more, if someone speaks about whether Michael Jordan is the goat — or GOAT — it conjures up positive images.
The acronym stands for Greatest Of All-Time.
Isn’t that an interesting contrast? To be a goat or to not to be a goat, that is what I ask of thee.
Think about the word bachelor, typically associated with an unmarried man.
And yet, after four years of university schooling, men and women alike earn a bachelor’s degree regardless of whether they are single or married.
The meaning of some phrases probably depends on the location where they are said.
If someone in North Korea expresses, “that’s the bomb,” it’s not likely the same as if the same words are said by a teenager in Illinois.
I get that change is inevitable.
Some words that were staples in my teenage years are no longer in vogue. Personally, I’m glad that not everything anymore is groovy.
What I really wonder is whether it’s necessary to enroll in an adult English as a Second Language course to get caught up on all of the words and their possible meanings.
Would that be cool, even in the heat of summer?
