Talk:Skunked term

Not a neologism

Whilst neologisms may be featured, this is a term established for 6 years that is very useful in linguistic discussions. Deku-shrub (talk) 19:15, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Questionable examples

These are not exactly examples of "skunked terms" by the definition described in the opening paragraph:

"Other examples include "socialism", "niggardly", "Oriental", "data", and "media".[7]"

"Data" and "Media", examples of disputed plurals, come close to the definition given for a skunked term, but as examples of disputed pluralization only they have not really acquired variant meanings as required to be called "skunked". They certainly do not compare to examples like "fulsome", which is more illustrative of the definition.

"Socialism", has not ever really changed its meaning, it is just ideologically charged and can be thrown about by opponents when attacking political measures that technically are socialism of a mild kind, but they need a scare term. The phenomenon is in common use with other ideologically-freighted categories and words. But it hasn't changed the meaning of anything. One could get into debate about whether or not socialism demands collective or at least state ownership of the means of production, or revolution, and anything else is social democracy, but these distinctions have been inside baseball mindsets within socialism since the early 20th century at least, and the word socialism widely used similarly to today.

"Niggardly" is an interesting example of, on the one hand, an already archaic and hardly used [even 30 years ago] term known to ever fewer people and easily dispensed with for the sake of charity, and, on the other hand, one of the most absurd and contrived controversies in language of recent times. But it isn't an example of a word changing its semantic meaning over time.

"Oriental", which originally meant "eastern", as it does in Spanish and other Romance languages, could be considered an example much earlier for the transition it made from meaning "eastern" in general to "Asian". But it's more recent transition to lesser or unacceptability is also not an example of skunking as defined, simply of a term being consciously deemed unacceptable for reasons social, historical and cultural rather than linguistic/meaning change.

I suggest that line either be removed or the definition of skunking at the top of the article needs to be significantly broadened to capture these quite different developments. Random noter (talk) 14:34, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Explanation is simple: in the article, skunked itself gets skunked. 2001:171B:2274:7C21:85A4:39F8:CB67:C203 (talk) 13:22, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Wakuran (talk · contribs) has removed faggot, niggardly and Oriental from the article, today. The lead section of the article as currently written does assert that "skunked term" also means a word that becomes difficult to use due to other controversy surrounding the word, though, which I assume is what's being claimed for these, although it's not a very clear way of putting it.

Is the lead wrong to give that second definition? (I'm unable to access the cited Ben Yagoda source to see what he actually says about it.) Belbury (talk) 15:21, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

I can't see that source either, but if it's accurately cited, it does cover those three words, which each have acceptable uses, but which are hard to use because of their other, unacceptable uses (faggot and Oriental) or their similarity to an unacceptable word (niggardly). —swpb^{T • beyond • mutual} 14:08, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I mostly thought that words that showed semantic shift or flow, shouldn't be grouped together with words that coincidentally shared phonetics with slurs and similar, shouldn't be grouped together, as the underlying phenomena and causes are quite distinct. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:44, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Etymology

Why 'skunked'? Because they've been 'defeated'? An explanation would improve the article.Malick78 (talk) 13:26, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

add?

Is flaunt an example, being often misused for flout? —Tamfang (talk) 04:30, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

That's catachresis. 2001:171B:2274:7C21:85A4:39F8:CB67:C203 (talk) 01:40, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Questionable modern definition given for "literally"

This article says the colloquial, modern meaning of "literally" is equivalent to "figuratively". This isn't true, as far as I'm aware; it is in my view used to amplify the closeness to realism of a phrase, while not necessarily compromising its figurativeness. The source that is cited is a paywalled Telegraph article (so I can't read it) which seems like it is quoting the OED (would it not be better to cite the OED, then?), but the OED defines the colloquial use of "literally" as follows: "Used to indicate that some (frequently conventional) metaphorical or hyperbolical expression is to be taken in the strongest admissible sense: ‘virtually, as good as’.". I consider this to be very different from meaning "figuratively", and I would edit this if I had more courage and a Telegraph subscription. JDS648 (talk) 14:59, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

References

@JDS648: Just checked, the Telegraph article does not make that claim anywhere either, just But it now adds that, informally, the word can be “used for emphasis rather than being actually true” such as “we were literally killing ourselves laughing”. But even if "literally" has both literal and non-literal uses, I don't know if that makes it a "skunked term", though? Some of the examples seem like OR -- like there might be a source saying that a word might have multiple meanings, but is there a source saying people are eschewing the word altogether because of that? Umimmak (talk) 19:39, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

I've edited the article to reflect the source. I think it's still an example of a skunked term; It's definitely an example of semantic bleaching. But I'd like to see a reliable source that supports the skunked term claim. I agree that the examples sections seems to have a bit of an WP:OR issue. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 21:07, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Transitioning/evolving

Some disagreement on how to phrase the definitional lead sentence, a word that becomes difficult to use because it is transitioning from one meaning to another.

User:Keith-264 prefers evolving to transitioning because they say that "transition isn't a verb". I think evolving is misleading for implying a gradual change, though, when in all of these cases it is one meaning being replaced with a single other meaning. There was never a point in time where "steep learning curve" meant neither easy nor difficult, but something halfway in between.

Transitioning seems okay to me as an intransitive verb, but perhaps because it is in transition from one meaning to another would be more correct? Belbury (talk) 08:34, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for mentioning the matter, word meaning changes like decimate (reduce by a tenth) being used by people ignorant of its meaning to mean "a lot" don't change overnight so evolution is a fair description. Either way, using "transition" as a verb is wrong, it isn't one. PS I speak English English. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 14:34, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

This is a silly argument; either word is perfectly fine. "Transition" can be a verb, because language evolves. And the gradual adoption of a discrete change can rightly be called evolution. One or both of you, touch grass. —swpb^{T • beyond • mutual} 14:11, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

bitermly

"Biweekly" has come to mean either "occurring every two weeks" or "occurring twice a week". The same ambiguity exists for the word "bimonthly".

I often find people fretting about these words because they could be taken to mean "twice a [period]", but I cannot recall ever seeing or hearing them used in that sense. —Tamfang (talk) 21:45, 9 July 2023 (UTC)