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Usenet Posted 22 years ago
Usage
Garner's ''skunked'' inclusions
In "A Dict of Modern Amer Usage" lexicographer Bryan Garner introduced the term "skunked" words to refer to words that undergoing a marked change from one use to another that become subjects of disputes as to their "proper" mwanings, e.g. "fulsome" and "effete."
I was surprised that he includes "decimate" in this list because there is hardly anybody who uses the term anymore in its original sense of "reducing by one-tenth. For the term to have any real meaning I think there must be at least a suzeable percentage of the literate community who regards the "modern" sense of the term as improper and I believe there are not many holdouts on the old sense of "decimate" just as there aren't too many people who become apoplectic now about the sentence adverb sense of "hopefully."
I'm sure that somewhere on this planet there is somebody who insists that "livid" should still refer to a "blue leaden colour" just as there is probably somewhere who thinks "dilapidated" should only refer to "stone" but
must we really take these Canutes seriously?
I was surprised that he includes "decimate" in this list because there is hardly anybody who uses the term anymore in its original sense of "reducing by one-tenth. For the term to have any real meaning I think there must be at least a suzeable percentage of the literate community who regards the "modern" sense of the term as improper and I believe there are not many holdouts on the old sense of "decimate" just as there aren't too many people who become apoplectic now about the sentence adverb sense of "hopefully."
I'm sure that somewhere on this planet there is somebody who insists that "livid" should still refer to a "blue leaden colour" just as there is probably somewhere who thinks "dilapidated" should only refer to "stone" but
must we really take these Canutes seriously?
Top answer
[nq:1]In "A Dict of Modern Amer Usage" lexicographer Bryan Garner introduced the term "skunked" words to refer to words that ... "[/nq] As you point out, "skunking" is clearly a transitional stage after which the evolved meaning becomes entirely accepted. ) Whether or not a word has passed beyond its skunked status, though, is bound to be something of a personal judgement.
- [nq:1]In "A Dict of Modern Amer Usage" lexicographer Bryan Garner introduced the term "skunked" words to refer to words that ...
- "[/nq] As you point out, "skunking" is clearly a transitional stage after which the evolved meaning becomes entirely accepted.
- ) Whether or not a word has passed beyond its skunked status, though, is bound to be something of a personal judgement.
- I'd say that "decimate" isn't quite through, and I'd put "hopefully" as a sentence adverb in a similar albeit slightly different category.
- ) For what it's worth, I'd say that "effete" is no longer skunked if that was a fight worth fighting over that one, it's been lost.
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1 Answers
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[nq:1]In "A Dict of Modern Amer Usage" lexicographer Bryan Garner introduced the term "skunked" words to refer to words that ... of "decimate" just as there aren't too many people who become apoplectic now about the sentence adverb sense of "hopefully."[/nq]
As you point out, "skunking" is clearly a transitional stage after which the evolved meaning becomes entirely accepted. (Post-skunked wor
As you point out, "skunking" is clearly a transitional stage after which the evolved meaning becomes entirely accepted. (Post-skunked wor
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