Re: file searching/vista help

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Paul Lagasse wrote:
> Being more a descriptivist than not, I have no problem with someone
> using willy-nilly to mean "in an unplanned manner," or for a dict. to
> admit that that usage exists without using "erron." -- and in common
> usage I think Random House is probably right: "sloppily" or "haphazard"
> (Web10) is now the first sense for most Americans.
The problem with such changes (even a prescriptivist like me
acknowledges that changes in meaning can take place, and some are
even useful) is that
1) the new meaning flat out contradicts the etymological one; and
2) it too often results in the creation of a new synonym for a
sense for which English already had plenty of words or phrases,
while a word that was unique in meaning what it did is no longer
recognized in that sense. If we let "willy-nilly" mean sloppily,
what do we use if we need to translate nolens volens? The same
holds true for the common misuse of "comprise" as a useless
synonym for "compose, constitute, make up, go to make," leaving
us with no single word that means "to include totally." C. S.
Lewis called it verbicide, and I agree.
Now a change in meaning that was useful was what befell
"internecine." It originally meant merely "lethal, deadly"; the
_inter-_ prefix was intensive. But people mistook it for
"mutually self-destructive" (what one wag once called the
Kilkenny cats syndrome)--an attribute for which English had not
previously had a single, simple word. So that was a useful change.

--
Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx