To continue the Carroll quote:
"The question is," said
Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."
Take the
word 'hacker', for example. There is a widespread idea that it is used for bad
actors; which is not the original usage. Simply giving in to this idea is
allowing the change in meaning to be the master; fighting back is an attempt to
establish mastery over the word. This may or may not be successful.
The
question isn't whether the new usage or the old usage is correct. The question
is what one means to communicate, and whether one will simply accept the meaning
as understood by a given hypothetical person, or whether one will (in the manner
of Humpty Dumpty) attempt to force the word to mean what one thinks it should
mean.
The question, as Humpty says, is which is to be master - the word,
or the speaker. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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