This may be why the current cohort of education majors I'm teaching
looked very confused when I asked them why there were so many fewer than
three hundred of them, and then asked them to don armor and line up for
drills. Even telling them that they might well have Gauls in their
classes failed to motivate them. I tried to bribe them with more salt,
but to no avail.
On a more serious note: we still have to deal with the distinction
between (a) meaning change that happened long ago and is not really
relevant to modern usage, although it may be fascinating otherwise, and
(b) ongoing meaning change that may or may not be inevitable, but which
(arguably) erases useful distinctions. I don't think I have to use
"decimate" in its original sense...but I still want to maintain the
distinction between "insure" and "ensure." That may be a picky example
(it's one I had drummed into me by a particular English teacher, so I
attach perhaps more weight to it than most) but I suspect that most of
the list's membership would agree that there is some utility in keeping
"imply" and "infer" separate. Even descriptive linguists have a
prescriptivist streak -- we just feel more conflicted about it.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Karl Hagen
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 2:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Tasmanian Devils
So do you restrict the application of "dilapidated" only to stone
structures? Do you believe that "nice" _really_ means "ignorant"? Or
that a "gossip" is actually a godparent?
That line of thinking is generally known as the etymological fallacy for
good reason.
DD Farms wrote:
> At 06:25 AM 1/30/2008, STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:
>> DD,
>> Here's the relevant portion of the OED entry for "decimate." {And
>> cited definition 4b.} . . .
>
> DD: I know that the dictionaries go to usage. That hoi polloi use the
> word in their ignorance of the underlying derivation does not bother
me.
> From a Information Theory view, I know what they mean.
>
>> If you look at the full entry, the military meaning as applied to the
>> Roman army practice of killing every tenth man in a mutinous unit is
>> the third meaning. The first two, which are obsolete, are "tithing"
>> and "dividing into tenths." . . .
>
> DD: The point being it originally had the general meaning of one
tenth.
>
>> I think you may almost be guilty of the etymological fallacy. But it
>> was only the third meaning, so you're partly exonerated.
>
> DD: I think not. I was implying, not the Roman practice so much, as
the
> idea of tenth. Still I fall often to word folly.
>
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