This recently came up in conversation - is the word 'imminent' - as in somebody's return is 'imminent', i.e. expected to occur before too long in the future - used only in a the sense of foreboding? I have often used it refer to an event about to occur. I have heard that the passage of the health care bill is 'imminent' (and not by FOX news). Can someone clarify and perhaps offer a couple of instances where my interpretation is apropos?
Thanks.
Hi! Here's anyway some dictionary information:
Link Apparently the treatening aspect plays an important part in it.
I've always thought it just meant that something--good or otherwise--was about to happen.
Someone on one of the national news stations was giving the
weather, this AM, and forecast severe weather as imminent
in the plains today.
I use the word for all occasions, and let the context determine whether or not foreboding is warranted.
It's not an unknown phenomenon. A neutral word will start getting used more and more often in a negative context until some folks decide that it can only mean something negative. Another example of this is enormity. Fortunately there will always be staunch defenders of the language who will continue to use the word in non-negative contexts.
News media use "incredible", as in the floods in Tennessee.
Hardly unbelievable, actually, though the damage can be.
Floods occur yearly, believe it or not.
I learned enormity as a negative word and, as a staunch defender of language, have fought for its negativity. I'm beginning to learn that I need to research what it is I'm fighting for. That applies to more than language.
Browsing my B&M OED I see that the original definition of enormity was something along the lines of 'divergence from the norm.' Enormous had a similar meaning. This goes back to the late 15th century. The limitation to divergence from the norm in size, and then only in the sense of excessive size, dates to the late 18th century. Enormous took on the sense of 'great size' in the mid 16th.
By negative do you mean pejorative?
a staunch defender of language
I have a book called Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity. Latin (and Ancient) Greek are no longer spoken languages, except if you count the all Romance languages and Modern Greek. Is French merely a degraded Latin? Everything that happened to Latin as it become French is something the guardians decry. The change in pronunciation, the semantic drift of large parts of the vocabulary, the decline of declensions, and the transmogrification of of conjugations. O, the enormity of it all? Is French less efficient than Latin or more? Which language is better? About the only thing linguists can agree upon is that language changes. It is as inevitable as the tide lapping around King Canute's feet, no matter his fiats or diktats. My follow-on question is Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I think imminent had a "negative" meaning from the start: its Latin root min is also found in menace.