VERBICIDE
Verbicide is the murder of words. There are many ways to do this, not all of which are intentional. Perhaps the easiest way to kill a word is by using it as a synonym for a similar word, rather than in a way which preserves its distinct meaning.
A good example of verbicide in action is the word "disinterested". This is increasingly used as though it meant the same thing as "uninterested" (which it doesn't) thus undermining the distinct meaning of the word and effectively rendering it useless. For the record, a person who is uninterested is a person who couldn't care less, whereas, a person who is disinterested is (or should be, if verbicide weren't taking place) a person with no vested interests. It follows that an uninterested politician and a disinterested politician are very different things indeed.
This may seem like a minor issue, the sort of issue that a pedant like myself would get into a big hoo-hah about, but which really isn't of any particular significance to the wider community. I would disagree. In the example above, the misuse of the word disinterested could result in an important concept being lost from the language (consider the use of Newspeak in George Orwell's 1984 as an example of deliberate verbicide by a totalitarian regime, albeit a fictional one).
What I am trying to say is this: Words matter. The large and varied vocabulary of the English language is one of its strengths. We should defend subtle and important shades of meaning, because our language (and by extension our ability to communicate effectively with each other) is greatly impoverished by the loss of words, whether done deliberately, or through carelessness.
"We cannot stop the Verbicides, the best we can do is not to imitate them" (C. S. Lewis, "Studies in Words").
Verbicide is the murder of words. There are many ways to do this, not all of which are intentional. Perhaps the easiest way to kill a word is by using it as a synonym for a similar word, rather than in a way which preserves its distinct meaning.
A good example of verbicide in action is the word "disinterested". This is increasingly used as though it meant the same thing as "uninterested" (which it doesn't) thus undermining the distinct meaning of the word and effectively rendering it useless. For the record, a person who is uninterested is a person who couldn't care less, whereas, a person who is disinterested is (or should be, if verbicide weren't taking place) a person with no vested interests. It follows that an uninterested politician and a disinterested politician are very different things indeed.
This may seem like a minor issue, the sort of issue that a pedant like myself would get into a big hoo-hah about, but which really isn't of any particular significance to the wider community. I would disagree. In the example above, the misuse of the word disinterested could result in an important concept being lost from the language (consider the use of Newspeak in George Orwell's 1984 as an example of deliberate verbicide by a totalitarian regime, albeit a fictional one).
What I am trying to say is this: Words matter. The large and varied vocabulary of the English language is one of its strengths. We should defend subtle and important shades of meaning, because our language (and by extension our ability to communicate effectively with each other) is greatly impoverished by the loss of words, whether done deliberately, or through carelessness.
"We cannot stop the Verbicides, the best we can do is not to imitate them" (C. S. Lewis, "Studies in Words").
