April 19, 2007

When Good Words Go Bad

I Just .... Get ..... Steamed ..... when I hear words that used to mean something else entirely become co-opted by various groups. You hear them all the time, "ho," "gay," "weasel," "bang," and the list goes on and on. Small wonder that talk/shock jockies get burned by casual use of a word like 'ho.' And then there is me. I love slang. I mean it. Not gutter slang like 'ho' though. Old fashioned slang. Mickey Spillane, Sherlock Holmes, Dashiel Hammett, gangster movies, molls, guys, dolls, gats, spats and all the words that came out of their characters' mouths. That kind of slang. Sure, I know, jazz meant drugs back in the day. It also meant music and the clubs where the drugs were. But did jazz ever mean anything else before that? Nope. It is a consistent word. Gay used to mean an emotional frenetic happiness. Ho used to be a noise Santa Claus made. Weasel still is a very pretty animal. Bang used to mean the noise a gun made. I just hate getting gunned down by words becoming inconsistent. Sigh.

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