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Carpal Tunnel
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Since I am interested in this topic, and not in maths, I try again. This time I hope that the absence of any distracting geometric terminology will allow the question to be seen.
A post on another forum intoned: "'Drivel' is right, 'dribble' is wrong". This led me to the OED and the discovery that "drivel" in the sense of worthless speech actually started off as "dribble". So the use of "dribble" for "drivel" is just a case of going back to the future, as it were. That then got me thinking about "nice". I would love a T-shirt that says: "Shift happens - only nice people say otherwise". That got me wondering about the evolution of nice from pejorative to compliment, and on to today, when it is increasingly used as a pejorative term once more. That's the elliptical evolution of the thread title. Not circular, since the pejorative usage of "nice" is not the same as its earlier pejorative sense, but still similar in spirit anyway.
Evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, there is something akin to a point to this rambling. Are there other examples of similar evolutions, in which a word's meaning has shifted through spectrums and come back to a point not far from its origin? And would anyone like to design that T-shirt for me, preferably with the firs two words in AS, or even better, PIE?
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Pooh-Bah
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Let (prevented)
homely (a talented homemaker but cozier than Ms. Stewart)
cute, (I think meant ugly but I can't find it, anyone
Also meant sly)
Cunning (cute - modern version)
I can think of several one way shifts but no double shifts.
Actually cute and cunning have kind of traded defs which is a double shift of another color.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Quote:
Let (prevented)
homely (a talented homemaker but cozier than Ms. Stewart)
cute, (I think meant ugly but I can't find it, anyone
Also meant sly)
Cunning (cute - modern version)
I can think of several one way shifts but no double shifts.
Actually cute and cunning have kind of traded defs which is a double shift of another color.
Thanks, Zed. The words you list are examples that illustrate why I asked the question. The "let/let" change is not at all uncommon, but I'm interested to know if other words have done as "nice" seems to be doing, and drifting back to having a similar tone or intent to its original meaning. At the very least "nice" is now often damning with faint praise, when it's not actively dismissive. It's the trek back that makes it an interesting question, at least to me.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Let and let are like cleave and cleave. The one meaning permit is from OE lætan, the one meaning hinder is from OE lettan. Two whole nother words.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Quote:
Let and let are like cleave and cleave. The one meaning permit is from OE lætan, the one meaning hinder is from OE lettan. Two whole nother words.
OK, thanks, so that's one knocked right out of the ball-park. Any more for any more?
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Carpal Tunnel
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politician, in its earliest sense:
A schemer or plotter; a shrewd, sagacious, or crafty person. In later use also: a self-interested manipulator, whose behaviour is likened to that of a professional politician.
one could argue that this drifts back and forth, or that it has never changed all that much.
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Carpal Tunnel
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This drift of meaning, technically called catachresis, is as widespread as it is curious. Egregious once meant eminent or admirable. In the sixteenth century, for no reason we know of, it began to take on the opposite sense of badness and unworthiness [...] Now, however, it seems that people are increasingly using it in the sense not of bad or shocking, but of simply being pointless and unconstructive. - Bill Bryson, Mother Tongue
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