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Kinda takes you back to Alice in Wonderland, doesn't it - a word means precisely what you want it to, nothing more, nothing less! 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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a word means precisely what you want it to
Depending on how far out that you extends, yes.
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Well, how does this fly, then: "He was so angry that the blood drained out of his face, leaving him as white as a sheet. He was absolutely livid." [Cliché city. Get some new ones. In fact, get a life - Ed.]Now, no one would be in any doubt about the general sense of those two sentences. But would they associate "livid" with the pale face? I don't theenk so!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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The trouble with word changes is that while the speaker may know what he means, a large part of his audience does not.
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yes, true Bill - that's one of the things that fascinates me about the Great Vowel Shift, when it would seem people across England started to heavily modify their whole pronunciation of words so as to make one word sound like another in many cases... yet it seems to have happened over only 30 years, which is very rapid change in linguistic terms. I bet there were *many Bills getting *very upset at that...!
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I'm sure glad we don't have the dialect problems so common a few hundred years ago, when in England about fifty miles from home, a traveller could ask for "eggs" unsuccessfully, because in that locality they were called "eyren" (? sp.)
1. And certaynly our langage now vsed varyeth ferre from that whiche was vsed and spoken whan I was borne.
For we Englysshe men ben borne vnder the domynacyon of the mone, whiche is neuer stedfaste but euer
wauerynge, wexynge one season, and waneth and dyscreaseth another season. And that comyn Englysshe that is
spoken in one shyre varyeth from a nother. In so moch that in my dayes happened that certayn marchauntes were
in a shippe in Tamyse, for to haue sayled ouer the see into Zelande, and for lacke of wynde thei taryed atte
Forlond, and wente to lande for to refreshe them; And one of theym named Sheffelde, a mercer, cam in-to an
hows and axed for mete; and specyally he axyd after eggys; And the goode wyf answerde, that she coude
not speke no Frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no Frenshe, but wolde haue
hadde egges, and she vnderstode him not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wold haue eyren: then the
good wyf sayd that she vnderstood him wel. Loo, what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges or
eyren. Certainly it is harde to playse eueryman by cause of dyuersite and chaunge of langage.
(emphasis added) (Harris & Taylor, p. 86)
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Incidentally, that quotation raises another question. I have read that London's river, the Thames had the "th" pronounced as in "thin", until the first Hanoverian's Teutonic pronunciation compelled courtiers to follow his example. The spelling in the quotation "Taymes" clearly contradicts the claim of Hanoverian's having changed the pronunciation.
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Nice idea Max-- in fact it is Pure Brillience!
shall we try to include some radically changed words in our posts?
nice not that long ago was not a complimentary word.. (hints of its old meaning are find in the idiom "a nice bit of business" used to describe something underhanded, sly, rude or mean) and i am trusting Simon Winchester on this one, pure in victorian times, was a term for dog sh*t--collected and used by tanneries.
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old hand
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shall we try to include some radically changed words in our posts?I can't stand the radical change that's occured in "gay". It of course used to mean happy, and according to today's Bartelby.com feature, Gertrude Stein gave it the homosexual connotation. ( http://www.bartelby.com/66/52/55552.html) Then, because of the public's negative view of said group, it came to mean bad or unacceptable, but I think this use is generally confined to younger people. I constantly hear "that's gay" meaning basically "I hate that." It's purely an example of bigotry desroying a perfectly good word.
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