The Evolution of English

Language is never static, and English has proven to be one of the most flexible. While France’s linguistic elite, l`Academie francaise, regularly cleanses the language of obnoxious foreign words which have gained popularity, English readily, even greedily, adopts words and phrases from other languages. These changes are often subtle, or boldly public, of minor import, or great impact.

There have been several attempts by advertising agencies, naturally, to create new meanings of words in order to promote their products. Who can forget Burger King’s “Have it your way” jingle, or “Where’s the beef?” which actress Clara Peller (http://www.tvacres.com/admascots,  Sun. Sept. 7,2009) complained about in a 1984-5 Wendy’s commercial.

Even Canada’s favourite donut chain, Tim Hortons, sought through media to redefine the word “steep”, so that it (and the companies’ products) be associated with “great”. Rather than using its common meaning ( to soak in water or other liquids as to soften, cleanse or extract some constituent http://dictionary.reference.com/browse) the chain  introduced  its new steeped tea, with actors using the key word out of context: a mother responds to her son’s achievement with the term “steeped”.  This attempt to change our vernacular panned out.

But that did not deter another advertising company to attempt to do the very same thing with the consumer item “Sucralose”. Individuals, in family settings, were given a food item containing the product and their response is “sweet”. Certainly, that is the purpose of the product—a sugar alternative. But it was unable to rebrand the name to imply “excellent”.

Even, the television show, “Seinfeld”, the gold standard of  90s sitcoms, attempted to impact our culture and with it our language. The “low speaker”—someone who barely whispered in conversation—and the “close talker”—a literal “in your face” babbler, were hilarious characters, but those titles never entered our vocabulary, although it seemed as if they were perched on the edge of success. Two phrases, which are extremely memorable: “Master of his own domain” and “Soup Nazi” –were even closer to achievement.

Television has not been as successful at influencing our language as other technologies have, especially the computer.  No one seems to give second thought to the usage of terms such as : internet, blog, tweet, e-mail, on-line, to mention a few examples.

It appears that famous individuals were able to introduce new words into the English vocabulary. Who doesn’t forget Sadam Hussein’s boast, at the beginning of the first Gulf War, that his response to invasion would be “the mother of all battles”? The word “battles” is interchangeable with numerous other nouns, introducing a myriad of phrases meaning  “unparalleled” or “the zenith”.

Winston Churchill’s contribution to English is highlighted with his unforgettable words of encouragement to the British people during World War II—“blood, sweat, and tears.”

The most prolific influencer of the English language has been its golden boy, playwright William Shakespeare. He has been credited with about 1,700 words, never before found in any British documents or papers: for example  obscene, suspicious, road.  And numerous phrases were used first by him which are still in use today:  elbowroom, to catch a cold, give the devil his due. (http://nosweatshakespeare.com/resources)

Yet, there have been many changes to our language for which an attribution cannot be found. (The same is true of jokes). Who was the first person to use “groovy” or “cool” in the 1960s? Who altered our word meanings in such a manner that the adjective “good” could be interchanged with its polar opposite “bad”? When and why did the word “wicked” gain the meaning “excellent”? My curiosity is not satisfied.

At a meeting the other day, one employee used a very common word in an extremely uncommon manner. He spoke of government bureaucracy in terms of being “glacial”. I don’t know if anyone else caught the difference, but I immediately made my own suppositions. Later I grabbed my Merrian--Webster and leafed through its pages. The first definition for the adjective was expected: extremely cold. Not to offend anyone, but sometimes government employees can be described this way. But the final definition was more preferable in the context of our meeting: very slow. A glacier, according to Wikipedia, can be stagnant, or move an average of two to three centimetres per day. One Antarctic glacier grows an astounding twenty to thirty centimetres each day. But even that is barely noticeable. (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier)

Certainly, this latter definition fit the context; That government bureaucracy sometimes works in an extremely lethargic manner. Case settled? No. I thought, “I’ve never heard that word used like that.” Who did he borrow it from? Or was he the originator of a new contribution to our English language? Perhaps the answer will forever allude us; These questions are members of a unique club known as “imponderables”. But this fresh usage was evidence of the continued evolution of the English language. So, watch what you say. You may very well craft a new word or connotation.