On 4/19/2020 8:58 AM, Tina Manley wrote:
I posted a meme
Sigh. Another good, useful word lost.
It's not so much that I object to words being repurposed, as that I am frustrated by the hole they leave behind. They
don't get replaced, at least in the short run, and one is forced to try to work around the gap, in order to convey
meaning effectively.
"Discern", and "differentiate" are perfectly good words, that are being stretched to fill in, and one may get more
precisely there with circumlocutions, but I miss the old "discriminate". It was quite precise, thus delightfully self
defining.
A "meme" used to be something that arose naturally within a culture. One could
only be identified in retrospect.
I thought that in its new form, it was shorthand for some phrase, idea, image, etc. that
had "gone viral".
Now, it is apparently something that may be invented by an individual and set loose, and is already a "meme" when
released into the wild, not only after proving itself robust enough to spread widely.
There is, of course, a considerable list of words borrowed from other languages to represent concepts feelings and
things that didn't have suitable representation in English. It seems a shame that we need to further impoverish the
breadth and depth of our language, though.
Poor Pedanty Moose
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|