(So? The root of the word "gay" is that of being happy and joyful.
Words change over time, and so do their meanings!)
In that you are quite wrong. Words do not change meanings. When someone is trying to corrupt the language they are always trying to hide the true intent of their agenda. Saying that black means white will never make black be white, it only confuses the issue.
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I've often wondered how those who see the ToE as a personal attack on their chosen religion managed to deal with linguistic evolution.
Now I know. They have the same "la la la can't hear you la la la" attitude.
No, YOU are the one who is quite wrong, you ignorant fuck!
Words do change their meanings over the course of time - for example, Shakespeare uses the word 'presently' - which, in his day, meant 'immediately' or 'at once', an interpretation that is not put on it in current useage.
In the 1950s, if someone said they had a gay time, they merely meant they had an enjoyable time - so it is quite true to say that the word 'gay' has a different meaning now to the one put upon it then. A different additional meaning - so this is a different sort of change to the one I highlighted from Shakespeare.
Do you imagine there is some sort of secret atheist society that has set out to corrupt the language so that the existence of god is more easily deniable?
Paranoid or what....
Words do not change meanings? You're full of it.
Case in point: in the 17th century, the architect Sir Christopher Wren was asked to rebuild St. Paul's Cathedral in London, which had been gutted by the Great Fire of 1666.
When Queen Anne saw the result, she is said to have proclaimed it "awful, artificial and amusing." This was a great complement! In that time, "awful" meant "awe-inspiring", "artificial" meant "artistic" and "amusing" meant "astonishing."
This story may possibly be apocryphal, but those words did have those meanings back then, which are very different from their meanings today. What, was the Evil Gay-Atheist-Liberal-Pinko Architect Conspiracy behind this change?
If everybody starting using black in place of white, eventually they would change meaning. Languages are defined by the people who speak them.
Of course, the colors themselves won't change, but &HFFFFFF would be called black.
"Do you imagine there is some sort of secret atheist society that has set out to corrupt the language so that the existence of god is more easily deniable?"
Behold! The Fundie Word Keeping-the-Same Defintion Project!
Deck the halls with boughs of holly,
Don we now our GAY apparel,
"When someone is trying to corrupt the language they are always trying to hide the true intent of their agenda. Saying that black means white will never make black be white, it only confuses the issue."
Vegeta, what's his irony level?
Enthusiasm used to be negative - it meant you were crazy.
Now it's a good thing that means you're eager and excited.
Words change sound and meaning. That's why we don't speak Old English anymore. That's why we use "like" in strange places.
You fail.
Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
See? People who confuse language are doing the Lord's work.
Science, Research, Theory, Truth.
Fundies sure like to twist those around, yowzah.
Words do not change meanings? Well, that's just silly, but we'll get to that presently. For now, I'd lay off using your computer. He's suffered enough.
(How many can you spot, boys and girls?)
This idiot thinks Olde English and modern American English are exactly the same, huh?
I guess he's never heard of archaic usage.
Try not to be stupid. Let me write some English for you:
Sothlice sum mann haefde twegen suna. Tha cwaedh se gingra ging to his faeder, "Faeder, sele me minne dael minre aehte the me to gebyreth."
This is the prodigal son, btw.
It's pronounced:
sothliche, sum man havde twain suna. Tha quoth say yingra to his fader...etc
In a quaint form of modern English we might say: In soothe a certain man hadde twain sons. Then quoth the younger to his father... etc.
So words don't change?
And 'sele me' means 'give me'. However, in modern English 'sele' would be 'sell'. Meanings don't change?
Don';t be ridiculous. The old English was closer to German in grammatical form and vocabulary than is modern English. Why, words were taken in from Greek, Latin French and European and other languages. Language changes all the time. Only a language that is not a living tongue maintains the same unchanging form.
As to 'gay', apart from its 'rpoper' meaning of lighthearted and jolly, it also was applied to prostitutes in late Victorian and Edwardian England.
Any of this sinking in?
Ah, a prescriptivist. The American Heritage Dictionary is about as close as I want to get to that, and that only because they go to great lengths to make their points about usage.
Put it this way: why could Martin Gardner use the term "cult" to describe a school of alternative medicine fifty years ago? That particular sense is distinctly unfamiliar to me. Hell, Gardner's still alive, and I don't think he has used it in that sense anytime in the last thirty years.
Or another word -- "queer". Not only has it changed meanings to mean "homosexual", its meaning has actually started to drift again to generally mean "not straight". How's that not happen again?
GAY
1178, "full of joy or mirth," from O.Fr. gai "gay, merry," perhaps from Frank. *gahi (cf. O.H.G. wahi "pretty"). Meaning "brilliant, showy" is from c.1300. OED gives 1951 as earliest date for slang meaning "homosexual" (adj.), but this is certainly too late; gey cat "homosexual boy" is attested in N. Erskine's 1933 dictionary of "Underworld & Prison Slang;" the term gey cat (gey is a Scot. variant of gay) was used as far back as 1893 in Amer.Eng. for "young hobo," one who is new on the road and usually in the company of an older tramp, with catamite connotations. But Josiah Flynt ["Tramping With Tramps," 1905] defines gay cat as, "An amateur tramp who works when his begging courage fails him." Gey cats also were said to be tramps who offered sexual services to women. The "Dictionary of American Slang" reports that gay (adj.) was used by homosexuals, among themselves, in this sense since at least 1920. Rawson ["Wicked Words"] notes a male prostitute using gay in reference to male homosexuals (but also to female prostitutes) in London's notorious Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889. Ayto ["20th Century Words"] calls attention to the ambiguous use of the word in the 1868 song "The Gay Young Clerk in the Dry Goods Store," by U.S. female impersonator Will S. Hays. The word gay in the 1890s had an overall tinge of promiscuity -- a gay house was a brothel. The suggestion of immorality in the word can be traced back to 1637. Gay as a noun meaning "a (usually male) homosexual" is attested from 1971.
"I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried:" (Psalms 119:147)
"Prevented" the dawn? How? By stopping the sun from rising? No. In King James' time, "prevented" meant "preceded". "I preceded the dawning of the morning" (i.e., "I rose before dawn"). It acquired its meaning of "precede in order to hinder" later.
But words don't change meanings ... [/sarcasm]
You realise you are shooting yourself in the foot with this argument? if the word gay still means happy and joyful, then surely gay sex is just very good, enjoyable sex...
Although I realise that the concept of people enjoying sex is scary to you fundies.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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