By Tom Dodge
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-979409.mp3
Dallas, TX –
There's a lesson or story to be had in just about any word. So says commentator Tom Dodge.
Language Arts homework with grandson Andrew Dodge raised some interesting points about natural language changes that occur all the time. I asked him if he could think of an example of a word that had changed meaning. "Starve," he said. Which was a good answer. He knew that in Chaucer's day it meant to mean to die from any cause.
I told him that the first time I heard "hippie" used to describe an anti-establishmentarian young person with long hair was in 1965. Previously it described people with callipygian behinds. I said that maybe a hippie was considered "hip," meaning "cool," or "with it," as in "hep" and "hep cat" from the previous beatnik era.
The point is that language changes but it doesn't just change randomly. There's always a logical reason.
Sometimes, I told him, words lose their reputation just as people do. A word not particularly insulting at one time was "slut." But he should not try using it today, I said.
Then, the next day, I recalled our conversation when an MSNBC political talker was suspended for referring to a rival female political talker as a "slut." Well, if Samuel Pepys, were suddenly to time-travel from 1664 London to present-day America he would wonder why an important town crier would even be discussing a common household maid in the first place, or even remotely care what her opinions might be. The Oxford English Dictionary cites Pepys as writing in his diary entry for February 21, "Our little girl Susan is a most admirable slut, and pleases us mightily."
"Slut" probably acquired its pejorative connotation because of rich employers like Pepys, who wrote of his frequent secret predations on the maids. However, times have changed, "mightily," as he would say, and that day when men could freely denigrate women, physically or verbally, is over. A shift in the power of public opinion now protects formerly powerless Americans, or even non-citizens in America, from such abasement. It still happens but the difference is that when men do it today, they must pay the consequences.
So, Andrew, if you're listening, remember that every word has a history of its own. It is called etymology, a history that also tells us about ourselves, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Tom Dodge is a writer from Midlothian.
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