AFTER perusing many articles, by a particular columnist, I was piqued by his censuring of a government minister. The columnist openly labelled the minister as ‘asinine’.
Why? Well the minister used the word ‘deportment,’ so the irate writer chided him (for being a dunce), and in ‘evanescently’ clear language. The minister ‘was shot down.’ Here is the joke. The word ‘deportment’ is indeed pronounced ‘dee-port-ment’/deportment, -port-/ and not ‘dee-port-e-mau’/deportemau- port-/. So in zealous ignorance (maybe being blinded by his sickening hatred), Mr. Scholar sought to brandish the humble minister. And by the way, the columnist’s ‘evanescently’ clear language proved to most rainbow-like; it disappeared in ‘thin air’. He got smart, and so the ‘evanescently’ clear language is now ‘incandescently clear’. (I posit that even fools can learn and change).

A second anecdote is worth telling. I was actually told that ‘words’ never change meaning. Lucky, I was the one-man audience. Such a statement, even in front of third formers, is bound to engender uncontrollable laughter and mockery. I thought of equivalence in stupidity for the lady: ‘The sun freezes ice.’

Well, if I say this worries me, you will not get the real import and impact. The word ‘worry’ has changed a lot. It has lost its original poignancy. So I am really ‘worried.’ Here is my reason.

‘Worry’ may actually shorten one’s life. The ancestor of our word, Old English wyrgan, meant “to strangle.” Its Middle English descendant, worien, kept this sense and developed the new sense “to grasp by the throat with the teeth and lacerate” or “to kill or injure by biting and shaking.” (So, please re-read Matt. 6:34; and  Phil. 4:6).

After you are done, you will see why modern-day preaching, at best, is about entertaining and not educating and informing. In the 16th century, ‘worry’ began to be used in the sense “to harass, as by rough treatment or attack,” or “to assault verbally,” and in the 17th century the word took on the sense “to bother, distress, or persecute.”

It was a small step from this sense to the main modern senses “to cause to feel anxious or distressed” and “to feel troubled or uneasy,” so that now, we flippantly say, “ah man, nah worry.” Quite a big semantic shift indeed! Here is more support.
‘Awful’originally meant “inspiring wonder (or fear)”. It is a blend of the words “awe” and “full”, used originally as a shortening for “full of awe”. In contemporary usage, the word has taken on an entirely negative meaning.
‘Gay’ readily comes to mind. Originally the word meant feelings of being “carefree”, “happy”, or “bright and showy”; it had also come to acquire some connotations of “immorality” as early as 1637.

The term later began to be used in reference to homosexuality, in particular, from the early 20th century, a usage that may have been dated prior to the 19th century. So “gay” meant to be happy not too long ago. Now everyone refers to it as a negative thing or homosexuals. Now, examples of semantic changes are many and on-going. So I will just list a final one, and this again was born out of a funny encounter.

Upon my requesting to see the Bank Manager (In Canada), I was told that she will be with me ‘momentarily.’

I replied (quite jocularly, ‘nope,’ that I want to see for at least ten minutes. Why? Let us go to the dictionary again.

mo•men•tar•i•ly-: for a moment or an instant. And there is a usage problem. In a moment; very soon, etc. Please note: Momentarily is widely used in speech to mean “in a moment,” as in ‘The manager is on another line, but she’ll be with you momentarily’. This usage rarely leads to ambiguity since the intended sense can usually be determined on the basis of the tense of the verb and the prevailing situation. Nonetheless, many critics hold that this adverb should be reserved for “for a moment,”(length of time) and the extended usage (point in time) is unacceptable to most language-trained students.

I needed to see her, the Bank Manager for a ‘long (length of) time’ even if I ‘in a moment’ (a point in time) meant a long wait, but it would have been worth it, since I would have seen her ‘not momentarily.’

So, never say that words do not change in meanings. And never go about making these changes in an ad-hoc, and abrupt manner. Bye the way, ‘dunce’ (the word) is the descendant of an actual human scholar.