Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 April 22

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April 22

Words get worse

Language changes, and words (it seems to me) more often go from having a positive or neutral meaning to a more specific and negative one, Cf etymologies of words like egregious and rape. I'm sure there are countless other examples. Is there a name for this process? Temerarius (talk) 05:28, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

In at least the second edition (edited by Gowers) of Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, the term "worsened word" is used for this concept. But as you see, Wikipedia does not have an article under that name, and I've just searched it in various online dictionaries (including the OED Online) and not found it, so I don't think it can have been widely adopted. I couldn't even find a usable online cite for it, except this passage from a book by William Safire, which names collaborator, imperialism, colonialism, and academic as examples of the concept and quotes a few words from Fowler/Gowers. --76.69.46.228 (talk) 05:53, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Semantic change describes the way words change their meaning over time in one way or another, but the article doesn't seem to have a specific name for the phenomenon of "worsened words". AndrewWTaylor (talk) 06:36, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Maybe because it's too subjective a concept. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:12, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

It’s called “pejoration” but that just redirects to Semantic change, so I’m not sure Wikipedia has anything useful about it. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:47, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Wiktionary has it, however. For some examples, see this. Deor (talk) 14:59, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

This is known as the euphemism treadmill. That is, a word is used to describe a thing. People attach their shitty attitudes towards the thing to the word, and the word changes from a neutral to a pejorative meaning. So a new euphemism is created which lacks the pejorative meaning. And then, because people still have a shitty attitude, the new word takes on a new pejorative meaning, so yet ANOTHER new word has to be created, ad infinitum. Consider words like "moron", "retarded", "slow", "learning disability", etc. At one time, each of those was considered the "proper" word for the concept, and over time, because people have shitty attitudes towards people with learning disabilities, each successive word became pejorative with the next generation. --Jayron32 12:07, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

• But "euphemism treadmill" specifically applies to euphemisms. Note the examples in the original posting and the ones I quoted from Safire. These are non-euphemisms whose implications have shifted. --76.69.46.228 (talk) 21:56, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, this isn't euphemism treadmill. It's different. Temerarius (talk) 03:04, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Baseball executive Bill Veeck, in his early-1960s autobiography, stated that he wouldn't use the then-politically correct term "handicapped" to describe himself and his missing leg. He said, "I'm not handicapped, I'm crippled." Since then, of course, "handicapped" has evolved to likewise being politically incorrect. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:21, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

I can recall when "elite" had exclusively positive connotations. HiLo48 (talk) 08:25, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

And yet elitist has always had a pejorative sense. --Jayron32 17:52, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Note the awesome etymology of awful: [1] —2606:A000:1126:28D:D459:AC24:F056:5CBC (talk) 19:43, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

The opposite occurred with "nice": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nice --Khajidha (talk) 15:02, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Final stress in Russian

I've been studying Russian a while, and I get the sense that native speakers always go down in pitch on the last syllable of a word - even when it's stressed, unlike in English, where a stressed syllable goes up in pitch. For example in this pronunciation of молоко, the stressed final 'o' seems to go sharply down. Is my impression generally accurate? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:7B3E:7800:E46B:CF3C:77B5:5756 (talk) 09:01, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Regarding English, the feature of pitch rising on a stressed syllable has an exception: pitch falls if the stressed word is sentence-final. Intonation (linguistics)#English gives this example:

We ˌlooked at the ↗sky | and ˈsaw the ↘clouds

An example with a multisyllabic word with final stressed syllable with pitch starting high and going down in sentence-final position is

My desire is to create.

Unfortunately, the intonation article does not have a section on Russian. Loraof (talk) 17:28, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Here's good paper on Russian intonation. Search "Russian intonation" on Google Scholar for many more accessible academic works on the topic.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 17:58, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Tamil: National Thowheeth Jama'ath external links

Resolved

Are these links to the Sri Lankan National Thowheeth Jama'ath implicated in the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings?

• Official website
• Facebook

A talk page editor on the main article said they were, but another editor of the NTJ article disagreed. While the two links are clearly for the same organization (with the same logo), they use a different abbreviation and spelling than the most common spelling of the terror-linked NTJ. But I am skeptical because the Facebook posts include a plea for caution, patience, and balanced reporting on the Easter bombings. I can't imagine they would do that if they weren't the organization implicated in the intelligence report.

If they are correct, please add them back to the end of the NTJ article. Thank you kindly. EllenCT (talk) 10:53, 22 April 2019 (UTC)