That use does exist, but it's a (popular in the mid-90s, still occasionally encountered) ironic use that derives from the older (and particularly common by the American Right against the Left in the late 1980s and early 1990s, its peak before the current resurgence among the same political faction) use as a pejorative. So, the modern popularity of the older and original pejorative use isn't "losing meaning" from that use...
No, that's how words lose their meaning: when they are used in inappropriate context to describe something completely unrelated.
Another modern example of a word that rapidly loses its meaning is "fascism": these days it is used as a general term for any policy not supported by the person that uses it. BLM fascists, left fascists, ultraright fascists, antifa fascists. On the subreddit about new Apple "Foundation" show someone described the depicted Empire as fascist. Everybody are fascists, especially the US who have fascias everywhere in state imagery!
Those words are bandied around quite a bit, true. That said I would not say they have lost as much meaning as the ones thrown around by "progressives", i.e. the ones those you call conservatives [1] get thrown at them at every occasion. You know the ones I'm referring to, words like racist and homophobe and transphobe and nazi and fascist and all the other -is[t|m]s and -phobes and such.
[1] ...who in real life come from nearly all ideological standpoints, from "traditional" Marxists through classical liberals through centrists via conservatives to whatever lies opposite Marxists nowadays.
It hasn't lost meaning at all, it's just that some people don't like the meaning so they misrepresent it or pretend not to know what it is.
It basically means hypocrisy and/or insincerity toward popular progressive causes. That's the meaning. There's also an older one which has mostly been displaced as far as I'm aware, but if it's still used it also has a pretty well defined meaning. In context, at least in this context, it was not ambiguous which meaning was being used.
Yes, it’s an old usage just as niggardly or denigrate predate a word they’re often assumed to be derived from. The point is that people have to think about that in a context where they otherwise wouldn’t, and it costs so very little to avoid that.
Many projects have replaced these terms with more accurate ones in the past and it’s a very minor shift. It took very little time to do and years later, only aggrieved right-wing activists are still talking about it. Everyone else is just using software without the distraction of wondering about the origins of the terms they’re using.
Nope. Old definitions still holds. If some hipsters are re-using the word to bullshit people it does not mean that correct connotations are deprecated.
That was true maybe 5–10 years ago. I’m saying that this term is no longer used today, in 2019. Do you seriously still use it in discussions with your colleagues, on social media, etc.?
Yes, you can't say it any more... It actually fell out of favor long ago, but originally it wasn't considered all that bad of a term IIRC (I was pretty young).
Sadly it is so overused in politics is diminishes the impact of the word and obscures the original meaning. It seems to be the anti-intellectual grown up equivalent to "YOUR MOM".
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