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!
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...
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.
Words are defined by their use, not by what you want them to mean; use changes over time, and words have multiple meanings. The historical meaning is still there, it's simply not the only one anymore.
> Historical Humanism has been replaced by a modern definition that has no connection to the past.
Yes, it has, so accept that and move on. The word has taken on a new meaning, to a new group of people who are now the primary reason the word is used and thus rightfully what the word means to most people today.
Words do matter, but I'm of the opinion that changing the term for a thing doesn't change the essence of the thing, or what people think of that thing... At least very much. Some examples:
[Note: I'm citing these examples to point out that a shift in terminology does not usually result in a shift in attitudes. Which means... I'm not citing these examples to start an argument on the particular topics of the examples.]
The Rote Armee Fraktion / Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe. They were violent Marxist terrorists in West Germany from the late sixties and continuing about two decades. The German government refused to refer to the group by its chosen name. Baader-Meinhof Group implies a criminal syndicate tied to two lead personalities, and shoves away implications of ideological motives. The RAF, however, remains to this day mostly known by its own chosen name.
Homosexual / Gay. "Gay" was originally taken up by men in the sixties to refer to their sexual identity as something less medical than "homosexual" (then defined as a mental illness) and less negative/alienating than "queer." But it came to be an insult, used by the sort of people who assume the essence of homosexuality to be bad... So any word for it becomes an insult among such people.
Liberal / Progressive. This example is specific to American politics: in most of the rest of the world, these words have separate meanings and are not conflated. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose ideas would have previously been called "progressive", identified himself as a "liberal" loudly and often, cementing a shift in the word's common-use meaning. At the time, it made him more palatable to voters who would have balked at a the more radical implications of "progressive." But now, the same people who disliked progressivism dislike liberalism (American) on the same basis.
Moron / Idiot / Imbecile / Retarded. Each of these words was originally a clinical term with a specific meaning. Now each is an insult, and new clinical terms have been decided upon by the medical community in aggregate.
I agree with this 100%. There are a lot of previously useful words that mean almost nothing today. "Slavery" is one. "Rape" is another. I know people think they're doing good when they try to expand the definition like that, but all they're really doing is taking away our capacity to describe things accurately.
I don't mind the meaning of words changing, I just don't like words being thrown around to the point they are meaningless. Words like "fascism" and "nazi" have lost meaning, particularly on the internet, as they are frequently used by political ideologues to describe anything to the right of Justin Trudeau.
Abusing terms in politics isn't new of course but it's not something we should be encouraging or ignoring because there are some legitimate consequences. The obvious one is the disinterest/dismissal it generates when people legitimately do need to raise the alarm because people have been crying wolf incessantly. It also helps the legitimately bad guys to dismiss the attacks and pretend they are just like the moderates facing exaggerated attacks from an hysterical foe.
It often feels like words are losing their meaning, with everyone misusing terms they don't fully understand.
I don't want to be a doomer and have have surely unknowingly misused terms as well, but its definitely noticable how these originally clearly defined terms are getting used in entirely new ways.
And it's not just with technical terms like this, it also applies to originally obvious terms such as racism, sexism etc which have lost their original meaning entirely
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!
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