English is the world’s language of culture and commerce. It is always changing. Try reading Shakespeare or the King James Bible (1611).

1. Decades ago, most could distinguish between “both” and “each” as in “both Jack and Jill went up the hill” and “each candidate presented his or her platform.” Now these terms are used interchangeably and, as a consequence, neither is clear.
2. “Meat gets done. People are finished.” There is a difference between “done” and “finished” but the difference will shortly disappear because of one unalterable fact. Billions of times every day an electronic device requires us to push “done” when we are “finished.” Yesterday I called “Siri, telephone call to ????” (S)he or it replied: “To who?”
3. Who can forget Justice Neil Gorsuch’s faux pas in Bostock. This “textualist” and “originalist” thought he should interpret “sex” in the 1965 Civil Rights Act as meaning the same as “gender” means to some today. He failed to consult Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 2^nd ed., 1965, which explained that someone making that error was either joking or ignorant. That decision changed the law of the country with no input from Congress.

These changes have real life consequences.

Other transitions have occurred in the last decade.

• Hateful used to mean that a human individual was full of hatred, to wit, a settled rejection of another human. Now the term is often used to mean that a human being or an organization or an amorphous group disagrees with someone else on a matter of importance.
• Shameful used to mean that the writer (or a group of which he or she is more or less associated) has done something of which he or she has a serious feeling of moral regret. It now means (to some) that someone else or a group of which I am not a member has done something of which I would be ashamed if I had done it.
•  Disenfranchised properly means that an individual no longer has the right to vote, either for public or private office, for which that person was previously able to vote e.g.  by conviction of a felony. Now it refers to individuals, groups, and societies that don’t feel that their collective voice will prevail against the actual majority.                                                                                                              

Other changes took centuries:

• Nice used to mean “silly, foolish, simple.”
• Silly went in the opposite direction: in its earliest uses, it referred to things worthy or blessed; from there it came to refer to the weak and vulnerable, and more recently to those who are foolish.
• Wench is a form of the Old English word wenchel (which referred to children of either sex), the word wench used to mean “female child” before it came to be used to refer to female servants — and more pejoratively to wanton women.
• Clue: Centuries ago, a clue (or clew) was a ball of yarn. It morphed from yarn to key bits of evidence that help us solve problems.
• Naughty: Long ago, if you were naughty, you had naught or nothing. Then it came to mean evil or immoral, and now just badly behaved.
• Quell: Quelling something used to mean killing it, not just subduing it.
• Divest: 300 years ago, divesting could involve undressing as well as depriving others of their rights or possessions. It has only recently come to refer to selling investments.
• Senile: Senile used to refer simply to anything related to old age, so you could have senile maturity. Now it refers specifically to elders suffering from senile dementia.

It is not just words. The overuse of the passive voice can obscure the truth.

Active voice: A stray dog ate my doughnut.

Passive voice: My doughnut was eaten by a stray dog.

Passive on steroids: It seems that my doughnut was eaten.

1. Recently a reporter wrote: “his victory seemed to be a reflection of…” but the reporter never stated when or to whom it so seemed, leaving the reader to conclude an everlasting groundswell of public approval.

CONCLUSION

“ Horace, writing more than 2,000 years ago in The Art of Poetry observed that usus (“usage”) is the ius et norma loquendi (“the right and rule of speech”). The change can come about naturally and gradually with social and cultural change, or it can come more rapidly and destructively either through the domination of language by the ignorant and inept, or by intentional distortions and to control information and argument by ideological fanatics. What we have seen recently is a “woke” assault on meaning — the ability of language to correspond with the real message that the speaker wants to convey to the learner.” 

“There is effective and beneficial change in language.  It occurs when wise writers and speakers find ways to enhance the range and subtlety of words and phrases.  Now we have the reverse: all too many users of the language abuse it by flattening out distinctions and nuances so that the ability to communicate clearly is lost.”  Robert V. Young, Professor Emeritus, NC State University.

Letters: English language-detransition