Changes in Meaning

On his podcast "Lexicon Valley," John McWhorter illustrates language change by using Henry James' The Ambassadors, written in 1903. He kept finding about one word every page that didn't ring true, though it was usually understandable from context.  Yet occasionally a whole flock of words would occur together, causing him to double back to parse it out. It was not always easy, as some meanings come into a language for a few decades and then fade out.

"I'm true, but I'm incredible; I'm fantastic and ridiculous; I don't explain myself even to myself."

Perhaps if I give a translation it will be easier "I am truthful, but I am not to be believed; I am given to fantasy and somewhat silly.*" 

What it all came to had been that  fiction and fable were inevitably in the air and not as a simple term of comparison but as a result of things said.  Also, that they were blinking it all round and yet they needn't so much as that have blinked it. Indeed if they hadn't Strather didn't see what else they might have done.  It's clear that some meaning of blink is going to be key here, and if we can just get that the rest might come into focus, though still with some odd word order, particularly at the beginning. From later contexts, McWhorter concludes that it means "pretend not to see." I note again that this is just a little over a century ago. I knew many people alive when it was written, yet it eludes us. Even with a probable meaning for blink it's tough.

Why then are some things in Middle English, six times as old, understandable with only a little help? (Not the poetry so much. The earlier versions of English seem more distant to us than they should, because poetic forms are more difficult even when written in our own era. Things meant to be simple instructions or letters to a relative go down more easily.) It is likely because even such a formal writer as James is giving us conversation, which is much more vulnerable to change. If we did not have writing, in fact, our language would change much more rapidly, as the idioms would be untethered from some standard meanings. It is still the case that villages a few kilometers distance apart even in Europe have trouble understanding each other, and this was even more the case when few were literate. It is not just slang that changes - the line between slang and idiom is fairly smudgy anyway.

Once we have learned a meaning we retain it and may even use it when it has gone out of fashion. Thus we understand movies from the 70s easily. We use the older meanings unconsciously, or as puns, even after they have passed on. Yet if we were to go back to that time and speak people would think we had had some kind of stroke or were affecting to speak a new language. I recall around 1980 amusing my coworkers with a telephone conversation I had had with a private therapist who used the phrase "I'm getting crunched for time and will have to dialogue with you in another space." We thought that was hysterical.  California out of control. It seems much less strange now.

*"Silly" itself has gone through ridiculous (current sense) changes. I noted that a dozen years ago when writing about the duo "Silly Sisters," a Steeleye Span spinoff.

Silly: Cognate with German selig, meaning happy, and goes back to Proto-Indo-European, of course, or I wouldn't mention it. Related to hilarious in that way.

O.E. gesælig "happy" (related to sæl "happiness"), from W.Gmc. *sæligas (cf. O.N. sæll "happy," Goth. sels "good, kindhearted," O.S. salig, M.Du. salich, O.H.G. salig, Ger. selig "blessed, happy, blissful"), from PIE base *sel- "happy" (cf. Gk. hilaros "gay, cheerful," L. solari "to comfort," salvus "whole, safe"). The word's considerable sense development moved from "blessed" to "pious," to "innocent" (c.1200), to "harmless," to "pitiable" (late 13c.), to "weak" (c.1300), to "feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish" (1570s).

Shakespeare's sense in "Two Gentleman of Verona" is somewhere between the the innocent and foolish meanings, I think. Do no outrages On silly women or poor passengers.