Pedants’ corner: Old words, new meanings
Image: Félix Armand Heullant (1834–1905) via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
The philosophers tell us that life is change. And this applies to language no less than it does to the creeping decrepitude of our mortal flesh. However, just as there will come a time when I can be more accurately described as ‘food for worms’ than ‘Andrew’, so there comes in the evolution of a word—‘literally’, for example—a point at which its old meaning is eclipsed by its new.
Literally used to mean ‘word for word; actually; without exaggeration or inaccuracy’. It was the opposite of ‘metaphorical’. Now in conversation and often in print, you will see ‘literally’ used metaphorically. For example: ‘I literally exploded from excitement’. I would say that ‘literally’ has now come close to totally reversing its meaning. Whenever I hear it used or see it in print, it is almost always being used as an intensifier, as in the example above.
The shift isn’t quite so arresting for other meanings on the endangered list. However, for ‘disinterested’, ‘fulsome’ or ‘decimate’, their meanings have been distorted such that you can’t trust that the author is conveying the meaning they intend. For the record, a disinterested party is not one that doesn’t care, fulsome is not a compliment, and decimating a population is not as drastic as a lot of people think.
As much as it pains me to make a pre-emptive surrender to the forces of error, the only useful solution I can apply when dealing with these words whose meanings are in such a vigorous state of flux is not to use them at all. There’s simply too little consensus on their accepted meaning. So, if you want to be understood clearly, these are words that are probably best eliminated from your writing altogether.
This is a shame, as one of the great advantages of English is that it has such a vast vocabulary (double the size of most other languages), and it should be possible for writers to find the mot juste (ha-ha) for every occasion. Still, it’s even more important for diligent writers to sacrifice ambiguity on the altar of clarity.
