Well said, indeed, Moose. Thank you.
Piers
-----Original Message-----
From: olympus <olympus-bounces+piers.hemy=gmail.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Moose
Sent: 19 April 2020 21:04
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [OM] Isolation??
On 4/19/2020 8:58 AM, Tina Manley wrote:
> I posted a meme
Sigh. Another good, useful word lost.
It's not so much that I object to words being repurposed, as that I am
frustrated by the hole they leave behind. They
don't get replaced, at least in the short run, and one is forced to try to work
around the gap, in order to convey
meaning effectively.
"Discern", and "differentiate" are perfectly good words, that are being
stretched to fill in, and one may get more
precisely there with circumlocutions, but I miss the old "discriminate". It was
quite precise, thus delightfully self
defining.
A "meme" used to be something that arose naturally within a culture. One could
only be identified in retrospect.
I thought that in its new form, it was shorthand for some phrase, idea, image,
etc. that had "gone viral".
Now, it is apparently something that may be invented by an individual and set
loose, and is already a "meme" when
released into the wild, not only after proving itself robust enough to spread
widely.
There is, of course, a considerable list of words borrowed from other languages
to represent concepts feelings and
things that didn't have suitable representation in English. It seems a shame
that we need to further impoverish the
breadth and depth of our language, though.
Poor Pedanty Moose
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|