By Anne Southern
WHEN teaching my students how to give speeches, I always used to discourage them from beginning ‘The dictionary definition of [insert topic, eg euthanasia/capital punishment/abortion] is…’ and I would wince when well-trained students from other institutions stood up and confidently began in this way.
While it helps to pin down what it is you’re talking about, people don’t always realise that a dictionary isn’t a definitive authority on the meaning of a word, but merely records how that word has been, and is currently being, used.
But having taught about the flexibility of language as a living, changing tool, adapting itself to the society that uses it, I find myself increasingly disturbed by the pace of the change. When Dr Johnson compiled the first comprehensive dictionary of English in the 18th century, he did so in the hope of fixing it, in the way that the prestigious Latin, a dead and therefore unchanging language, was fixed.
This worked very well for preserving our erratic spelling system – the mastery of which is the bane of all school children, and many adults. There are only a handful of words (focused/focussed) for which alternatives are accepted and the use of American alternatives like ‘color’– Webster’s attempt to simplify the system – gets many people hot under the collar.
But his attempt to fix meanings and usage was doomed and the Oxford English Dictionary has a team scurrying like hamsters on a wheel to keep up to date. I feel like personally abandoning the effort; last week I got a communication from a government department telling me they were going to ‘populate the whiteboard’ with my request.
My rudimentary Latin – take note, all those of you who think learning Latin helps with your English – tells me that ‘populate’ refers to people. And my prized Shorter English Dictionary – a 21st birthday present – confirms this. But an up-to-date dictionary gives an alternative definition, from computing usage, of ‘to add data to a document’.
Whether the whiteboard is real or metaphorical, I can only imagine. I get that computing needs a new vocabulary, and I suppose it’s helpful that it gives new meanings to old words; ‘mouse’ and ‘windows’ I can cope with. But I have yet to meet someone of my age who finds the ‘help’ button on a computer programme any use. It might as well be written in Swahili.
I know some of my older friends are flummoxed by changes in what is acceptable. When they describe someone as ‘coloured’ rather than ‘black’, they think they are being polite.
Referring to what were once known as ‘disabilities’ is another minefield. I have started using the term ‘not neurotypical’ for the whole range of labels from dyspraxia to Asperger’s syndrome but neither my spellcheck, nor many people I’m speaking to, recognise this expression. It’s a minefield.
I do find it hard when words that I have used judiciously for half a century suddenly have their meanings changed. I cringe when someone says ‘disinterested’, not in the sense of being neutral, but instead of ‘uninterested’. Maybe it doesn’t cause much misunderstanding, and ‘impartial’ is an acceptable alternative. But I know I am not alone in mourning the original meaning of ‘decimate’ – again back to my Latin – of ‘killing one in ten’ (a punishment in the Roman army) and then to ‘reducing by a tenth’. My old dictionary gives this as the primary definition, but does say that the current usage of ‘massively reducing’ was used in 1682. New dictionaries give this as the primary meaning – but I am still confused. Do people mean ‘totally destroy’ or ‘mainly destroy’? And what word do I use when I do mean ‘reduce by a tenth’?
Language isn’t maths, and isn’t always logical, but when a radio interviewer (claiming lack of sleep) said her guest was ‘nodding vociferously’, the other guest rightly queried this.
‘Oh yes,’ said the interviewer. ‘Well, nodding violently.’
‘‘‘Vehemently’’ is the word you want,’ I shouted at the radio.
Teachers encourage children to develop a wide vocabulary, not to show off, but to enable them to make finer discriminations, and if we are sloppy with our use of words we lose these. There are very few exact synonyms in English.
Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass said: ‘When I use a word … it means just what I choose it to mean.’ And of course, as he implied, if he was the ‘master’ he could dictate his own meanings.
This is the danger in language change. It does feel like a power struggle if someone insists on a different meaning, equating a ‘social democrat’ as a ‘communist’ or a person with right-wing views as a ‘fascist’.
These words are used as casual insults with little connection to their original meanings. That’s why we need some impartial, if flexible, authority – the dictionary may have its uses after all.
