Do you think words are losing their original meaning?

Question

As the world changes , I believe the meaning we give to words are changing too. For instance,the word Love, meant something different to our parents and grandparents... etc

'love' is used as an example here.

Answer 1

A computer used to be a person who performed calculations

The word “tide” originally meant “time”, and it survives in special words such as “Yuletide”, “Christmastide” and “eventide”. Now it is the predictable time-related rise and fall of ocean waters”.

The word “dismal” comes from the Latin phrase dies mali, originally meaning “unlucky days”. In medieval times, some people considered two days of each month as supposedly unlucky.) Its use in the phrase “a dismal day” (that is, one of those two days) turned it into an adjective that has lost its meaning of “terrible days”, and it now means boring, gloomy, or depressing.

Now for the best: the word NICE.

Way back in the beginning, the Romans had a word for it - "nescius," which in Latin means "not knowing" or, more bluntly, "ignorant." The French turned "nescius" into "nice," and used it to mean "stupid or simpleminded," and it was this sense that was first carried into English. But by the 14th century "nice" had acquired another meaning, that of "wanton or lascivious," so when Chaucer referred to a young woman as "nice," he meant nearly the opposite of what we would mean today.

In a remarkable reversal in the fifteenth century, "nice" swung in the other direction and was used to mean "shy" or "refined," and by the sixteenth century the word had been narrowed down to mean "fastidious or tasteful." We still use this sense in phrases such as "a nice touch" or "a nice distinction."

Our modern use of "nice" to mean "pleasant" dates only from the middle of the 18th century, and was remarkably controversial for many years. It was only in 1934, in fact, that lexicographers at Merriam-Webster stopped labelling this use as "colloquial" in their dictionaries.

Answer 2

Language is an adaptive process language has changed dramatically over the years. I think some words may loose their original meaning or the meaning is somewhat dampened ( I don't think you chose a good example I think the values and actions surrounding love has changed not the word itself) however, with the decrease in one meaning comes another and with most words the correlation of the original meaning and the new meaning isn't incredibly different.. In the cases where it is the old meaning stays intact and the new one as well unless for example it has been several generations with the new meaning being prevalent.

Answer 3

yes to a point words lose there original meaning look at gay queer now it means homosexual gay did mean happy and queer meant strange but its just slang and it changes but without change this world would be really boring so maybe its a good thing. and i think the reason why words change is because they are used out of context so much and people use terminologies and words when they have no idea what they actually mean and that may be the cause of why they change and become altered from there original meaning and plus there is so many different languages so i think some changes may be caused by confusion as well

Answer 4

Language is a living thing. New words come in, old words go out, and some words do change meaning over time. I'm not sure I agree with you about love, though. The meaning seems to be pretty constant over time as far as I've been able to tell. Could you be more specific?

Answer 5

Well if you think about it, words' meanings are always changing. For example, at the beginning of the 20th century, the word "gay" meant happy, content. Now the word has two meanings, and if you say somebody is gay, most likely you are not implying that the person is in a good mood.

Answer 6

If we are talking about the English language, you have to accept that it is a living language and that is continually changing. I remember when you could say that you had had 'a gay' time. 'Awfull' meant 'spectacular' and not 'terrible'.
'Queer' meant 'strange' or even, quite simply 'somewhat disorientated', which puts a totally different light on the expression, 'I'm feeling a little queer.'
Having spent more than half my life in a non-English speaking environment, I admit to being a bit of a traditionalist - I could be 'Disgusted from Tonbridge Wells', but one has to move with the times, doesn't one?
I still say 'It takes me 15 minutes to get to the office,' as opposed to 'My commute is 15 minutes.' Maybe you can't teach an old female dog new tricks.

Answer 7

The meaning of words has been changing right since languages were started to be used.

Here's a funny example that I came across in H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds".


"The man followed his wife into his house, ejaculating loudly."

The word 'ejaculate' here means to yell or curse... A meaning for which the word is not used today !

Answer 8

yes, some words are losing their original meaning. The word GAY is the main example.

Answer 9

That depends on the way you see it, and the languague you speak.For example, I speak Spanish (my 1st languague)and English, and we receive a lot of influence from English languague making it more rich and dinamic or if you see it from another point of view loosing your roots.Every languague needs an update and the people are in charge of that we can make our languague more dinamic and rich without loosing the essential. In my case I speak Latin American Spanish, different from the one they speak in Spain,Still understand everything they say but our Spanish is full of new components depending of the region , specially in South America but at the end of the day we all understand eachother and we are familiar with the words of other countries of our region and that makes me apreciatte how dinamic, rich and unique we can make our own languague.Makes us original as a culture.

Answer 10

the words don't mean different things, but the act or feelings have changed