” … the key to words that make you feel nauseous is not the meaning - it’s easy, after all, to hate the word ‘torture’ – but something else entirely. Something idiosyncratic, something about the way the word feels in your mouth as you say it. The horrors of ‘membrane’, for instance. Or the eccentricity of ‘gusset’.”
“How “ironic” came to be defined as “coincidence” is anybody’s guess, but for our purposes, we like to refer to the following quote from the 1994 film Reality Bites. When Ethan Hawke’s character is asked to define “ironic,” he says, “It’s when the actual meaning is the complete opposite of the literal meaning.” Thank goodness for Hollywood.”
— from Words That Changed Their Meanings
Now if only people would stop using it to mean coincidence, life would be a sweeter place.
Il y a un cadavre sur le lit. S’il vous plaît, faites changer les draps.
Hay un muerto en mi cama. Por favor, cambie las sábanas.
Da liegt eine Leiche auf dem Bett. Bitte wechseln sie die Laken.
“Humans communicate with one another using a dazzling array of languages, each differing from the next in innumerable ways. Do the languages we speak shape the way we see the world, the way we think, and the way we live our lives? Do people who speak different languages think differently simply because they speak different languages? Does learning new languages change the way you think? Do polyglots think differently when speaking different languages?”
— Edge: HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? By Lera Boroditsky
1. Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot.
2. Vernacular means of everyday communication — cellphones, social networks, streaming video — are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow.
3. Intellectual property systems failing.
…
“These 200 words were all removed from the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary in 1993, despite appearing in the equivalent Merriam-Webster.”
WHAT? No more bullshit?!
“I am trying to come up with a list of the most fundamental and crucial terms that are coming to define and will soon re-define the human condition, and that subsequently should be known by anyone who thinks of themselves as an intellectual.”
A few of those are oddly (alarmingly?) appropriate.
