tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post1559091110962372595..comments2024-03-19T08:09:22.326-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: What a Word Really MeansAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-87710740495640007222021-04-09T15:55:28.603-04:002021-04-09T15:55:28.603-04:00Interesting! I will definitely consider reading th...Interesting! I will definitely consider reading that if I can lay hands on a copy. Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-54450412982789414462021-04-09T13:15:03.711-04:002021-04-09T13:15:03.711-04:00@ Grim - Owen Barfield wrote a lot about this earl...@ Grim - Owen Barfield wrote a lot about this early in his career in <i>Poetic Diction</i> and <i>History in English Words</i> - note the preposition, tthere. He believed words told us the history of our consciousness, back through Old English and on into Germanic and Indo-European. I learned today that he felt he was misunderstood and wrote <i>Speaker's Meaning</i> later in life, which summarised those ideas and restated them in what he hooped was a clearer form. I know nothing else about it. If you read it, let me know how it went.<br /><br />Lewis and Tolkien both loved Barfield's thinking on these matters and encouraged him to write. I must just not get it, as it does not interest me. Too much anthroposophy in it for me.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-85307766689377809512021-04-06T20:49:15.839-04:002021-04-06T20:49:15.839-04:00@ Texan99 - I know he mentions "villain"...@ Texan99 - I know he mentions "villain" in <i>Studies in Words.</i> Perhaps that's it.<br /><br />@ Grim - I think what words <i>have</i> meant has enormous value, but only for those who have some familiarity with older vocabulary or combinations of sounds, even if they don't consciously make the associations. I suppose that can also work in reverse, and a Tolkien reader might move on to other older things and think "I've seen something like that before." Theoretically, that could trickle down even to a strictly modern vocabulary in successive dilutions, yet I think not. There are only so many sounds in the human repertoire, particularly when we are focusing on consonants. You need a broad collection of those associated sounds to start picking up associations from them.<br /><br />Or so I guess. I have not data.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-53075803723240770022021-04-06T20:06:25.908-04:002021-04-06T20:06:25.908-04:00I am a partial dissenter from this opinion, becaus...I am a partial dissenter from this opinion, because of the example of Tolkien re-awakening long-dead words like "warg" and "Ent" and "orc," and finding in them a real power. If I want to understand a word, I look at the etymology at least as much as the dictionary definition. <br /><br />It's only a partial dissent, but I think that there remains a residue that conveys somehow of what words have meant. Maybe it's because other words in the language with similar roots remain, cognates that we recognize subconsciously at least as conveying a similar meaning. Somehow, it matters whether you use the word that is related to that family of words, or an apparent synonym with a different etymology or from a different language family. The connotations, at least, differ in such cases. Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-58605399357606831612021-04-06T16:11:51.038-04:002021-04-06T16:11:51.038-04:00I've been working on a Latin-English dictionar...I've been working on a Latin-English dictionary from about 1900. Of course nearly all the Latin is a revelation to me, but what's really amazing is how differently we already use the English words after only a little over a century. "Vicious," for instance, used to have a strong connotation of association to vice. These days it most seems to refer to physical cruelty or danger, as a vicious criminal or dog, but not so long ago it was nearly as likely to suggest a non-violent vice like smoking, gambling, or Sunday traveling.<br /><br />C.S. Lewis has a discussion somewhere about words like villain, which used to have a fairly neutral socio-economic meaning before it began to describe the bad guy in a melodrama. The shift happens on the positive side, too, as in "nice," which meant precise or fussy before it came to mean "pretty much OK." Even earlier, apparently it meant something more like "ignorant."Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-69199951956764861812021-04-06T06:34:23.525-04:002021-04-06T06:34:23.525-04:00Donna B:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/5...Donna B:<br />https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/5/52/communicating.pngKororahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06208444799799287420noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-28457916100270676062021-04-06T00:59:25.361-04:002021-04-06T00:59:25.361-04:00"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said,..."When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."Donna B.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16771075314473811594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-73963032228108289302021-04-05T18:48:37.950-04:002021-04-05T18:48:37.950-04:00"Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in k..."Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future." -- ScrewtapeKororahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06208444799799287420noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-3129178843339305922021-04-05T18:14:20.636-04:002021-04-05T18:14:20.636-04:00The most likely outcome is a meaningless word that...The most likely outcome is a meaningless word that just means "really bad thing." I could cynically add "that liberal white people think black people find offensive. (Disclaimer: No actual black people were consulted in the defining of this word.)"Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-60457365709257826092021-04-05T17:37:25.138-04:002021-04-05T17:37:25.138-04:00Of course when words are used instrumentally, thei...Of course when words are used instrumentally, their meaning becomes incoherent. "Racism" is a good example, trying to weld the connotations of the old bad sense of the word onto neutral or even good contexts (like objecting to an Obama policy).<br />At some point, we have to converge on one meaning or the other.jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01792036361407527304noreply@blogger.com