Newspeak
Merriam Webster changes the definition of assault rifle to something that is not an assault rifle.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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April 2nd, 2018 at 10:10 pm
On the one hand, the dictionary is tasked with reflecting the real world usage of language. On the other hand, words mean things and if you can’t turn to the dictionary for the definitive answer on meaning, where do you turn?
A good example of this might be the fact that “literally” has come to mean both literally and figuratively after years of misuse. I personally find this maddening, but it is very difficult to turn back such a tide.
April 3rd, 2018 at 8:00 am
I am decimated about this.
April 3rd, 2018 at 8:12 am
So a dictionary is a book of definitions of words; or any book that looks like one.
April 3rd, 2018 at 11:23 am
They use the word in its own definition… so anyone thinking this isn’t a hack political move can think again.
April 3rd, 2018 at 1:16 pm
As Oldwindways says, actual usage, most notable in actual laws either historically or currently on the books supports M-W. We can’t even fall back on “the definitive answer on meaning”, because usage itself, and those very laws, has made there be no definitive answer.
A dictionary’s job is to report how words are used, not to demand we only use them One True Way.
(Descriptivism is the only viable model for living languages; try asking the French how “thou shalt not ever” is workin’ for them.)
(I am not at all convinced it’s Pure Politics, either. It’s not their job, again, to decide “the legal and common usage is Just Pure Wrong, and the old military-technical usage is The One True Way”.
It’s our job to convince people of that.)
April 3rd, 2018 at 1:18 pm
Bad enough to see words lose their meaning through misuse in popular “culture”, but it becomes truly malevolent when it is done intentionally to further an agenda.
That nebulous description will ease the broad banning of this thing without the need for specifics…because of course it’s all the guns they want, or at least to make you a felon for possessing something that can even very tenuously be applied to it. We’re being set up for this as we speak by the bump stock ban which will made prospective felons out of thousands with only the vaguest idea of why.
Same with my pet hate of the term “gun violence” which has become ingrained into the lexicon of even many gunnies. For some reason our old standby debate tool that inanimate objects don’t do shit violent or otherwise and even some videos of a gun lying there doing nothing, has not been applied to this evil and pervasive term. It is intended to apply by extension to every gun and imply that all are on the verge of a spontaneous murderous attack. Don’t use it, ever.
April 3rd, 2018 at 3:04 pm
As was said above the dictionary is more a record and reflection of word meaning and usage rather than a rule book of it…kind of a capitalism of discourse, you got buyers and sellers.
As is true in so many things, perception morphs into reality. But where is the limiter? If the dictionary also provides origin and etymology, does that not go to what is or isn’t an actual definition?
For the case at hand, it would be pretty easy to add the words “and often applied in popular discussion” or some such to that last meaning…that provides the appropriate nod to the power of common usage while preserving the original meaning and providing a measure of protection against commandeering words to further a particular agenda. Which is what this is really all about.
But don’t blame MW for recording it, blame (and counter as I mentioned above re “gun violence”) the unrelenting leftist components of public policy and discourse that drive it.
April 3rd, 2018 at 3:41 pm
I like the OED for this reason: it describes the historical meanings of the word, and the word’s changes of meaning over time. Perhaps somewhere in the future, people will read about assault weapons and say, “Gee, those old fashioned folks sure were stupid in how they described things.”
April 3rd, 2018 at 4:00 pm
It would be easy enough to give the true definition, and then explain its common misuse as such, e.g.;
“A light rifle firing an intermediate power cartridge, having a detachable box magazine and capable of fully automatic fire, typically having a pistol grip stock.
“Common misuse; any rifle with an appearance similar to or suggestive of an assault rifle”
(they could then show a picture of the StG44, the quintessential assault rifle, with the definition of ”SturmGevehr”, following after a tactical doctrine) as the genesis of the term.
And so yes; I do blame them, for you can see how easy it is to present reality as reality. But reality is the enemy to the goal of Total Transformation of a society from one of liberty to one of tyranny.
The problem, and the intent, of doing it the way they do it, and then taking the fake excuse of “current usage”, is that it separates us from our history, i.e. without more information, no one can read the old texts and understand them.
How many people today would immediately understand this sentence, as coming from the year 1890;
“It was a fine celebration, with much gay intercourse over the dinner table…”
To the same end, some schools no longer teach cursive writing— Knowledge of the big picture of human history, as put down in original manuscripts, then becomes available to fewer and fewer people, AND can therefore be more easily misrepresented. That process of obfuscation, redirection and substitution of course has been in effect for all of human history.
April 3rd, 2018 at 5:33 pm
@Lyle, Good comments on history.
I think changing word meanings and definitions is an attempt to perpetuate the following:
“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
“What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
April 4th, 2018 at 11:35 am
Duck (n) : any of various swimming birds (family Anatidae, the duck family) in which the neck and legs are short, the feet typically webbed, the bill often broad and flat, and the sexes usually different from each other in plumage; also: non-swimming birds with pointy beaks that don’t walk like a duck or quack like a duck, but kindof look like a duck i.e. chickens.