Usage Changes Meaning of Words
By Leonard WIbberley
First Published February 6, 1979
2/17/2016
The story is told that Noah Webster was once discovered by his wife kissing a pretty maid in the kitchen.
“Why, Mr. Webster,” she exclaimed. “I’m surprised.”
“No, no, my dear,” he replied. “We are surprised. You are amazed.”
I don’t suppose the reply was of any comfort to Mrs. Webster — but it illustrates how careless we can become with words and how over the years inaccuracies become correct usage.
The original meaning of surprise was to assail or attack someone unexpectedly, and that is the first definition given in the Oxford English Dictionary.
It is only when we get to the third definition that we come on our modern meaning of an unexpected occurrence or event — a party given for us without our knowing of it beforehand or a gift received without our anticipating it.
Some day it is going to become quite correct to describe an event as “very unique” or “most unique,” although unique means there is only one of its kind in the world and it is, therefore, an adjective which cannot be qualified.
And most of us have given up on the fight against the phrase “under the circumstances” which is a contradiction in terms, since circumstances are things which stand around us and, by their nature, it is impossible to be under them.
Words are the pigments which a writer uses to paint and when they change their color he has to be aware of the change, though at times he feels his palette becoming muddied as one color mixes with another.
Some colors change entirely and that’s a real handicap because no substitutes are offered.
I have been mourning for some years the loss of the word gay. Lighthearted, I suppose, is a replacement or fancy-free.
“Yet Our Hearts were Young and Fancy-Free” isn’t quite as good a title as “Our Hearts were Young and Gay,” which is forbidden these days.
“Neat” once meant clean, free from dirt and also precise. It was easy from the text to decide which meaning applied. But in recent years neat has become a catch-all adjective so that a sunset could be neat and so also could a sophisticated garbage-collection truck.
Weird once meant fate, so that a man who went to meet his weird went to meet his death. Goodness knows what he goes to meet now. A weird man was a seer and a weird woman was a witch and the Oxford English Dictionary is seemingly out of date in that it does not list the modern meaning of outlandish.
We are all aware that uncouth means rude or lacking in culture or manners. But wouldn’t it be handy if we had such a word as couth, meaning refined and civilized?
And what about ruth? It exists only as a little-used name for a female. But surely if ruthless means cruel and unmerciful, there is room for ruthful meaning kind and sympathetic.
Produce such words and one is exhilarated at the prospect of writing such a sentence as: “The King, who from boyhood had been known for his couth, had ruth on the traitor Asdak and set him free. Yet, in this he met his weird for it was the arrow of the same Azdak which killed him but a year later.”
One of the curious things about words is the different meanings attached to them in two countries which believe they speak the same language.
George Bernard Shaw summarized the situation by describing Britain and America as two countries separated by a common tongue, though that is perhaps taking the matter too far.
But I recall the surprise (that word again) of a G.I. stationed in England in World War II when asked by a pretty girl to knock her up in the morning. What she meant, of course, was to wake her up.
The word “bum” in England refers to the human posterior rather than a tramp and the phrase “a bum rap” suggests to an Englishman that someone has been hit smartly on the bottom with a stick.
Movies and television are gradually dissolving these differences and the day may yet arrive when the English word “fag” will have the meaning of “cigarette” in the United States.
But many differences remain and it is hard to explain why. Dessert, for, instance, in Britain means fruit and if you want what we call dessert in America you must ask for a sweet.
The hood of an American car is the bonnet of an English car and the fender is the wing. An immigrant myself, I still tend to complain to a mechanic that there is something the matter with my silencer (muffler) or that my dynamo (generator) is not charging.
Yet, when I was recently in London I was a little staggered at the telephone operator telling me “You’re through.”
It was a moment before I realized I that she did not mean that I was finished, but that I was connected to the number I was calling.
DESCRIPTION:
From the bestselling author of The Mouse That Roared comes a witty tale of a leprechaun in New York. Timothy Patrick Fergus Kevin Sean Desmond McGillicuddy (for short) is a leprechaun diplomat on a mission to convince the President of the United States to halt the construction of a new U.S.-owned airport on a tract of Little People land in Ireland. With the belief "mischief is me nature" and the help of a 10-year-old American boy, he proves wee folk a big force to be reckoned with. This special 60th Anniversary edition features a new Introduction by Quentin Fottrell, memorabilia with Rosalind Russell, original cover art by Aldren A. Watson, and previously unpublished photos of the author. A timeless classic, McGillicuddy McGotham will charm adults and young readers alike.
eBook Available Exclusively on Kindle
To hear about the upcoming releases of Leonard's many novels on Kindle, sign up for our newsletter at http://bit.ly/LeonardNews.
