Skunked term

A Skunked term is a term coined by lexicographer Bryan Garner in his 2008 edition of Garner's Modern American Usage to indicate a word that has undergone "a marked change from one use to another" and is "likely to be the subject of dispute".[1] Garner recommends avoiding such terms if their use may distract from your message's meaning.[2] Some terms such as "fulsome" may become skunked, then eventually revert to their original meaning over time.[3]

Older controversial terms include "decimate", which used to mean to 'kill one in ten' from the Roman practice of decimation which now means 'to destroy' and "hopefully" which used to mean 'in a hopeful manner' but now means 'it is hoped' since the beginning of the 1960s.[2][4][5]

Other such examples include "niggardly", "jewfish", "Oriental", "data" and "media".[6]

Recent examples include the 2013 Oxford English Dictionary's definition of "literally" to include "figuratively"[7] and towards 2014 the conflation of 'deep web' with 'dark web'.[8]

References

  1. ↑ "skunked term". Retrieved 6 September 2015.
  2. 1 2 Brenner, Erin (13 March 2014). "The Politics of Writing: Should You Use Skunked Terms?". Retrieved 6 September 2015.
  3. ↑ Brenner, Erin (22 February 2012). "The Story Behind "Fulsome"". Retrieved 6 September 2015.
  4. ↑ Liberman, Mark. "The H-word". Retrieved 6 September 2015.
  5. ↑ Beaujon, Andrew (19 April 2012). "Hopefully, this is the last we’ll write about ‘hopefully’". Retrieved 6 September 2015.
  6. ↑ Perlman, Merrill (20 October 2014). "How common descriptors fall out of favor". Retrieved 6 September 2015.
  7. ↑ Hawkes, Steve (13 August 2013). "Uproar as OED includes erroneous use of 'literally'". Retrieved 6 September 2015.
  8. ↑ Solomon, Jane (6 May 2015). "The Deep Web vs. The Dark Web". Retrieved 26 May 2015.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, November 26, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.