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How to Ride the Euphemistic Treadmill
Euphemisms for the Intimate Enemy (Photo credit: Sweet One)
How do you refer to a person or people with characteristics outside the perceived norm? Why should you do so at all?
Describing a person as belonging to a certain race or ethnic group or having a physical or mental disability, or commenting on a provocative or embarrassing topic, is a challenge on more than one level. Linguist and cognitive science Steven Pinker has called the first level of challenge “the euphemistic treadmill,” a form of pejoration (a shift of meaning to a negative connotation or a less sophisticated sense) or semantic change (an alteration of meaning).
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- The False Allure of Group Selection – Steven Pinker – The Edge (richarddawkins.net)
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Social versus societal
English: This is a diagram of societal development that encapsulates the stage of human development: hunter/gatherer, pastoralist/horticulturalist, agrarian, industrial, and post-industrial. It also ties those stage of development to the important consequences of societal development, namely: surplus, denser populations, specialization, and inequality. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
What’s the difference betweensocial and societal? Not much, but enough that you may become the victim of social stigma if you ignore subtle societal signals.
Societal is the pedantic alternative to social. They both mean “pertaining to society,” but as the latter word, first attested in the Middle Ages, was increasingly used in the modern era to refer to interpersonal contact rather than in the context of complex forces within human populations, societal appeared in the latter part of the nineteenth century as a more serious, scholarly alternative. It is mostly seen in such usage and is otherwise considered pretentious.
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- Social vs. Societal (dailywritingtips.com)
- Capitalism, the Superior Societal System (constitutionclub.org)
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Conscience vs. Conscious
What’s the difference between conscience and conscious? They stem from the same Latin root, but their usage is distinct. Writers occasionally confuse the two words, but if you remain conscious, you’ll likely be able to say with a clear conscience that you know the difference.
Conscience and conscious both come from the Latin word conscius; the word elements mean “with” and “two know.” (Yes, the -science in conscience means the same thing as science itself.)
Conscience is a noun meaning “sense of the quality of one’s character and conduct,” “adherence to moral principles,” and “consideration of fairness and justice.” Confusion between conscience and conscious occurs because the latter word is sometimes used as a noun synonymous with consciousness, meaning “mental awareness,” though the longer form is usually employed.
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- Conscience vs. Conscious (dailywritingtips.com)
- Conscience+ (danariely.com)
- The True Self (divinelightblog.wordpress.com)
21 Tips About Writing From Twitter
English: A Twitter tweet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’m a writing tip junkie. Any tweet or blog post or random comment that begins, “Here’s the best tip I’ve ever gotten about writing…” makes me click. What’s thirty seconds of time when I could pick up a gold nugget that changes my writerly life?
Mostly, 1) I already know them, 2) they’re pedestrian, or 3) they’re wrong, but occasionally I get one–or twenty-one in this case–that I think are worth passing on. See if you agree:
- Don’t try to be a writer
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Sabbatical
Followers of this blog will have noticed that there have been no original posts since the beginning of this year.
The story:
I have taken a sabbatical from writing; the quotes will continue—hard,fast and strong.
Till then!
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25 German Loanwords
The German language has provided English with a huge inventory of words, many of them pertaining to music, science, and politics, thanks to the influence of German-speaking people on those areas of human endeavor. Here are some of the more useful German terms borrowed into English.
1. Achtung (“attention”): an imperative announcement used to obtain someone’s attention
2. Angst (“anxiety”): a feeling of apprehension
3. Blitz (“lightning”): used only literally in German, but in English refers to a sudden movement, such as a rush in a contact sport
4. Carabiner (“rifle”): an equivalent of the English word carbine, this truncation of karabinerhaken (“riflehook”) refers to a metal loop originally employed with ropes in mountaineering, rock climbing, and other sports and activities but now widely employed for more general uses
5. Delicatessen (“delicate eating”): a restaurant or food shop selling meats, cheeses, and delicacies
6. Doppelgänger (“double-goer”): in German, refers to a look-alike, but in English, the primary connotation is of a supernatural phenomenon — either a spirit or a duplicate person
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20 Evocative French Words
English has borrowed words from other languages indiscriminately, and has done so for hundreds of years. Often, this happens even when a perfectly sound native or imported synonym already exists, but sometimes the new term gains its footing because it expresses a concept better than an existing term, or conveys a connotation or nuance no other single word or phrase does.
But speakers and writers of English don’t always use the word as it is intended, leading to semantic drift. In the interests of preserving the purity of some highly evocative terms, here are twenty such words acquired from French:
French language McDonald’s door sign (Photo credit: mechanikat)
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