The Patterns in Demise and Rebirth of Words and Expressions
All of us are familiar with the concept of a wave. A wave rises, reaching the so-called crest, and then falls to the so-called trough. Virtually all natural phenomena observed by man comprise characteristics of a wave, be it the flutter of sounds, the ebbs and flowers of water, the coruscation of light or, as observed very recently in science, even the undulation of gravitation in form of gravitational waves. Philosophers such as Alan Watts still extend the idea of a wave to life, believing in a continual cycle of birth and death upon passing of the rest position, or the midway point between a crest and a trough.
Words and expressions, even as language is not an independent natural phenomenon, also follow this pattern, with the caveat that the speed of change from crests to troughs is a direct result of language use by a people. A word or expression is born, it reaches its zenith (crest), after which something happens to start its demise, to finally reach a quietus (trough), with an indistinct chance to recrudesce anew.
The lesser the emotional quality of a word’s semantic field, the lesser the chance a word could begin a descent to a trough: it is hard to envision that words such as “have,” “go,” or “eat” could by organized action, let alone circumstantial fluke, fall into desuetude. Any such reason would have to be extrinsic to a word’s semantic field, which can include a government ban of the word or a development of a mass-scale cult for whom such a sound would become taboo. Accordingly, there are intrinsic reasons for a fall into disuse, which relate to a word or expression’s semantic field. This category contains self-realizations by speakers that a word suddenly sounds silly or that it fails to carry its intended meaning. Genuinely extrinsic reasons are rare; intrinsic ones abound.
Words in the crest stage that evoke emotions or vivid imagery are much more susceptible to a demise. Take two examples from contemporary journalistic newspeak and slang: “massacre” and “slay.” Both are nowadays increasingly used to connote defeating of a political enemy (or a rival celebrity), something that constitutes a stark difference from their original meanings that denote blood, carnage, and murder. The more these words fall prey into their newfound semantic competitors, the faster will be their original meanings’ schlep to a trough. Already now it appears uncomfortable, mismatched, or eerily comical at best to hear of “he massacred his opponent” or “slayed his victim” when they, in fact, refer to their original meanings. This is what we would call an intrinsic reason for having second thoughts about using a word or expression.
The most immediate component of human agency in this process is our love of hyperboles. This penchant is nothing new as evidenced in cultures throughout history, but the media and social networks of now have greatly hastened this process by their obsession with sensationalism, lionization of conflict, and a clickbait race to get the attention of the biggest number of on-line viewers. Continuous exposure to sensation produces numbness, so more powerful stimuli must be introduced to achieve the same end, a logic all too reminiscent of an addiction.
If a rise of a new semantic competitor for a word is one reason for pushing a word to a trough or crest, a depletion of its original meaning’s emotional quality is the other. Just think of what has happened to words such as “awesome,” “fantastic,” “wonderful,” “terrific,” “fabulous,” or “incredible.” The deprivation of semantic strength of these words is so pervasive that they barely mean anything at all. This weakness is why when using them one perceives a sense to precede them with a “soo” or another intensifier. “Awesome” originally conveyed a sense of awe, “fantastic” meant “as in a fantasy,” a “wonderful” turn of events would cause you to pause in wonder, a “terrific” sound would scare you, “fabulous” meant “as in a fable,” and something “incredible” was genuinely hard to believe. Such words’ original meanings have been chafed by new semantic competitors to such an extent that the original meanings of the host words fail to deliver any distinguishable difference among them. What is more, the greater the growth in use of a new semantic competitor, the speedier the fall of the established, discordant one.
Business jargon, especially marketing shoptalk, is culpable for this process in recent years. A word or a phrase’s expressive capacity meant to evoke a specific emotional response from a potential customer or business partner can become so diluted through continual use that it becomes an intrinsic reason for its fall to a trough; it is important to remember that when communicating to others in business and other settings. In 2013, The New York Times asked its readers to come up with such a list of insipid and, in some case, downright irksome, words and expressions whose overuse has catalyzed their steady march towards a trough. The result is both wacky and exasperating:
Many of these are curious neologisms, but the established words and expressions on the list are either witnessing a rise of much blander semantic competitors or are in the process of sapping of their emotional quality or, indeed, have already undergone it.
This turns us to the question of what is the prospect of potential rebirth of original semantic fields and replenishment of emotional qualities. Humans are the sole agents in language and just as it is up to us to cast a word or expression, inadvertently or not, into a trough, it is also up to us to revive it. For that to happen, a word has to complete its path to a trough and, in time, through universal disuse, the word will regain its former meaning and flavor, and in that process it could be taken up in a future generation to potentially replace another word or expression that should be dispensed with for yet another time.
