The Unexpected Evolution of Language Read Online Free PDF

Nowadays, however, no one pictures a wagon with a band on it if someone says, “Looks like you’ve joined the bandwagon” … unless maybe he attended clown college. So how did the word’s scope expand to politics?
    Since circuses often took time off during the year, those wagons had downtime. Politicians, always eager to get publicity cheaply, found good use for the bandwagons during the circus’s “off-season.” Since they contained built-in excitement, politicians put their own musicians on one of those wagons, had the band strike up “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” parade through town, and got everyone thrilled about their campaigns. Thus, the association between politics—or anything else that people consider important, like sports or fashion—and “bandwagons” was born.
    barbarian
    ORIGINAL DEFINITION: foreigner
    NEW DEFINITION: person considered backward and inferior
    Believe it or not, “barbarian” was not always a negative word. Because ancient Greece once was the indisputable cradle of culture, Greeks considered “foreign” anyone who didn’t speak Greek. To the Greeks’ ears, foreign languages sounded like babble, like people just making nonsense syllables such as “bar, bar, bar.” Thus, they called these foreigners “barbaroi,” which later became “barbarian” in English.
    That’s why “barbarians,” for centuries, just referred to foreigners. The word didn’t have an explicitly negative connotation. However, human beings haven’t changed all that much over the centuries. A tendency to think of foreigners as somehow mentally deficient, physically awkward, or just plain bad because they’re “different” always has been an unfortunate human trait.
    That unbecoming trait is why the word “barbarian” no longer necessarily suggests foreigners, but it does suggest people who are not as sophisticated, educated, or capable as people in the middle or upper classes. Today, “barbarian” is also an insult many women use to describe the men in their lives when they act uncivilized, backward, and uncouth. It’s better than some other words they could use to describe the men in their lives.
Famous Conans
Until the arrival of late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien, the most famous Conan was a barbarian, a character created in 1932 by Robert E. Howard.
    basket case
    ORIGINAL DEFINITION: quadriplegic
    NEW DEFINITION: someone unable to cope emotionally
    Unlike many of the words in this book, whose meanings shifted centuries ago, “basket case” is a term that developed and subsequently changed meaning fewer than 100 years ago.
    Initially, “basket case” was coined in England to describe soldiers left quadriplegics on the battlefields of World War I. Since these men either literally had lost their limbs or had lost the use of them, the men were sometimes carried around in baskets.
    Even if they weren’t actually carried around in baskets, the term became a common way to describe people with this plight. “Basket case” likely was an example of the kind of gallows humor that people, such as doctors or police officers, develop to cope with the horrors of their professions.
    “Basket” also suggested that these soldiers would be unable to work once they returned to their former lives. The world was not designed for “differently abled” people to work or live happily, so most quadriplegics would be forced to carry “baskets” and beg for money.
    The insensitivity of the term “basket case” led to its disappearance as a quadriplegic descriptor, but at some point in the second half of the twentieth century, the meaning of the term shifted to a metaphorically disabled person … but is still insensitive.
    Now, it suggests someone who doesn’t have the use of his or her emotional faculties, due to stress, overwork, or relationship problems. In effect, these folks suffer from a feeling of hopelessness not unlike that which is felt by someone who’s lost the use of his or