A lot of linguistic change is down to sheer ignorance - like the fact that disinterested (meaning impartial) is nowadays nearly-always used to mean uninterested (meaning having-no-interest-in) - such that to use the correct meaning is to invite misunderstanding.
Thus a useful word is lost.
Another more recent such change is to use "honing-in" when meaning "homing-in": as with a heat-seeking missile homing in on the exhaust jet of a bomber.
I would have thought that it was obvious that homing in - i.e. seeking its home - would be self-explanatory and the obvious usage; whereas the commonest correct common usage of honing, sharpening the edge of a knife (or, more exactly, giving the final touches to an already sharp edge) - was a little quaint, and probably known only to (mostly male) specialists and hobbyists.
I infer that those who began to use honing in to meaning homing in, until the mistake had displaced the correct; were doing so from a pretentious form of ignorance; rather than from plain dumb ignorance.
They were using a more obscure word derived from a verb - hone; instead of a common word derived from a noun - home; and that kind of thing is usually motivated by the desire to impress.
On the plus side; the incorrect use of honing in has not (or not yet) destroyed the possibility of continuing to use the verb honing for its correct purpose - which is a good thing, because it's a useful term!
7 comments:
Bruce, that is the tip of the iceberg. I'm not sure how much you're seeing this in the UK, but here in America we are watching collapse of literate spoken English in real time. One notable example is the increasing scarcity of the proper use of the past participle. "I haven't did that task yet." Similarly to your note, I don't believe this to be caused primarily by ignorance, but rather by pretentiousness. Specifically, the millennial generation's fondness for cutesy language novelties manifests in its adoption of the dialect of a certain minority sub-population numerous here for historical reasons.
The only time I have ever heard or seen "disinterested" used to mean "uninterested" is in posts like yours complaining about it. Perhaps its a British thing?
The one that annoys me, and which seems to have become extremely common in recent years, is using "begs the question" to mean "raises the obvious question."
@Nathan - "tip of the iceberg" - Indeed. The big new factor is social media and the like.
There is a combination of fashion - which is often deliberately rule-breaking (like the recent descriptor "very fun").
But another imperative of these politically correct decades is the simultaneous need to be inoffensive or uncontroversial - which makes language mean nothing other or more than the vaguest terms of approbation or disapproval.
Among teens and young adults, the everlasting/ perennial "cool" has gone from being cutting-edge, restricted in application, niche and fashionably-hip (back in the between-the-wars era, and then more widely in the 1950s), down to the current sense of meaning nothing more than "I personally like X - but in an undefined and unemphatic way; which it is OK for you to disagree with".
@William - Indeed. Disinterested was already dying when you were too young to remember - but the fact that (over several decades) it hasn't been replaced by another term with the original meaning is probably significant.
The ideal (and therefore possible reality) of disinterestedness has itself all but died-out...
Bruce, perhaps you misunderstood my comment. I mean that I have only ever heard "disinterested" used correctly, to mean "not standing to gain or lose anything and therefore impartial." I've never heard it used incorrectly to mean "uninterested."
@William - I had misunderstood you. We may have different reading habits, or I am sensitized to this; but I have not heard or read "disinterested" used *correctly* for a long time; indeed, I read it used wrongly by a well known writer just a few days ago.
Since, eventually, usage defines meaning, I acknowledge that disinterested is - for nearly everybody - now just a synonym for uninterested.
"The big new factor is social media and the like"
Indeed, language changes, but not all changes are equivalent. There is a significant difference between organic changes, adopting language based on people you actually know and who are part of your community, and people jumping on the next big thing just because it is the next big thing.
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