Culture · 6 pages · 12 min
How etymology is a history not a definition
The older sense explains the path a word took, and it does not govern what the word means now.
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From the opening
Etymology is the history of a word's forms and earlier senses. It is not a definition, because a definition states the senses speakers share now, which may have narrowed, widened, or turned relative to the start. The opening covers decimate left the one-in-ten sense, nice traveled far from not knowing, and drift follows recurring paths.
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Inside
- Decimate left the one-in-ten sense
- Nice traveled far from not knowing
- Drift follows recurring paths
- Dictionaries file history apart from sense
- Where the idea stops applying
- A distinction worth keeping
Sources
- Semantic change, including the shift in decimate
- The etymological fallacy