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this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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No Stupid Questions
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No such thing. Ask away!
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When Bob comes up with the word "squee-bear", he knows a squee-bear when he sees one, but he might not yet have worked out exactly what makes it a squee-bear to him. He might not yet be able to offer a definition. And if Bob talks about squee-bears to Alice and Charlie, they might start using the word in slightly different ways from Bob.
This sort of thing happens in the history of science, for instance. People start talking about "planets" (originally meaning "wandering stars") or "atoms" ("indivisible units") and then only later does a community of speakers nail down exactly what they mean by "planet" or "atom" and it turns out that planets aren't stars and atoms aren't indivisible.
For people, language use is axiomatic — and messy. We talk about things even when we don't know what they are; we talk about things even when we're not 100% sure what we mean.
Definitions come later.
People run into problems when they put definitions ahead of reality. That's what we see, for example, when creationists try to talk about "species", or transphobes about "woman". They act as if they want a simplistic definition they learned as a child to apply forever, in all context, and for anyone who disagrees to be just wrong. But that's not how language works and it's not how reality works.
I'm not disagreeing that it can sometimes happen as you've illustrated above. I am saying that it often does happen that coiners of new words know just what they mean by them. The person who came up with 'electrocute' knew exactly what he meant by it - to kill with electricity (notice how the word is a portmanteau of electricity and execute). That the word has started to be used by some as a word to mean something less specific is to me unfortunate, but is a good example of how words change over time. At any rate, it seems obvious that sometimes the definitions of words arrive fully formed at their birth, though not always so
Does electrocute mean that though?
I’ve been electrocuted and I’m here and alive.
Well, it certainly did, and that is the way I use it. I have heard people use it in other ways
From the Oxford English Dictionary.
I am saying that the word had a particular meaning when it was coined. Many people seem to use it for other things, and the dictionary reflects this. It seems odd to mean that a word that is almost nakedly a combination of electricity and execute is used to not mean killed by electricity, but it is the case
I'm not really sure what your objection is to what I've said.
Excellent write up !