Reading this from outside the U.S., what stays with me is how a word keeps living after the thing it named is gone. "Quota" grew — it carries far more now than the law ever allowed. But the drift can run the other way too: a plain, ordinary word gets a new meaning loaded onto it from outside, until you can't use it the simple way anymore. Same force, opposite direction.
What makes it uneasy is that the loading is rarely neutral. Someone trims the word to fit, and the new shape stays.
In the end a word takes the shape, the color, even the taste of whoever uses it — like water.
"Quota" expanded past its legal frame. The reverse case is at least as common in U.S. political language. "Woke" came out of Black American speech meaning stay aware of injustice. Outside speakers loaded it with their own meaning. The simple use is gone. Same mechanism, opposite vector. A community lost the word.
The trimming is hard to see, but the new shape stays.
I don't know if any law could control for drift, and I'm not sure we would want it to. Pinning a word in one conversation is a small way of holding the water in shape, but we have to realize it's pinned to that one conversation. Thoughts?
Thank you for reading from the outside. From inside, the drift is harder to see.
On the point that the pinning only holds inside that one conversation — I found myself feeling that may be exactly where its meaning lies. Holding a word still within a single conversation is a way of not painting over how the other person uses it, while still showing where you yourself stand. You respect the other person without hurting them, and at the same time you set down your own boundary. The very fact that it's limited to one conversation might itself be a form of respect.
People find it hard to understand each other. And I think that's exactly why we check with one another. Pinning might be the shape that checking takes — an effort we wouldn't need if we could fully understand each other, and one we keep up precisely because we can't.
I also found myself wondering whether pouring water into a vessel is simply what being human is. Water has no shape of its own. And still we pour it into a vessel and let it hold a shape for a while. To stay with the water image, I think each single act of pouring a word into the vessel of a conversation may be the most human gesture we have.
Then again, if we ever learned telepathy, I suppose none of this trouble would be needed.
The pin only works because it stays local. Try to make it universal and it overwrites the other person's use. That is design.
My research shows: pinning equals asking questions. We do it because we don't understand each other completely. We keep doing it because that incompleteness is the relationship.
I hope people understand the vessel line and that it outlast this thread.
Telepathy would solve the trouble, but the trouble is the relationship.
Reading this from outside the U.S., what stays with me is how a word keeps living after the thing it named is gone. "Quota" grew — it carries far more now than the law ever allowed. But the drift can run the other way too: a plain, ordinary word gets a new meaning loaded onto it from outside, until you can't use it the simple way anymore. Same force, opposite direction.
What makes it uneasy is that the loading is rarely neutral. Someone trims the word to fit, and the new shape stays.
In the end a word takes the shape, the color, even the taste of whoever uses it — like water.
You're right that drift runs both ways.
"Quota" expanded past its legal frame. The reverse case is at least as common in U.S. political language. "Woke" came out of Black American speech meaning stay aware of injustice. Outside speakers loaded it with their own meaning. The simple use is gone. Same mechanism, opposite vector. A community lost the word.
The trimming is hard to see, but the new shape stays.
I like your water analogy too. A word takes the shape, the color, even the taste of whoever uses it. I reminds me of the analogy @Jovanny Suriel wrote in his most recent piece: https://theunstated.substack.com/p/merit-said-what?r=uftxy&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web.
I don't know if any law could control for drift, and I'm not sure we would want it to. Pinning a word in one conversation is a small way of holding the water in shape, but we have to realize it's pinned to that one conversation. Thoughts?
Thank you for reading from the outside. From inside, the drift is harder to see.
On the point that the pinning only holds inside that one conversation — I found myself feeling that may be exactly where its meaning lies. Holding a word still within a single conversation is a way of not painting over how the other person uses it, while still showing where you yourself stand. You respect the other person without hurting them, and at the same time you set down your own boundary. The very fact that it's limited to one conversation might itself be a form of respect.
People find it hard to understand each other. And I think that's exactly why we check with one another. Pinning might be the shape that checking takes — an effort we wouldn't need if we could fully understand each other, and one we keep up precisely because we can't.
I also found myself wondering whether pouring water into a vessel is simply what being human is. Water has no shape of its own. And still we pour it into a vessel and let it hold a shape for a while. To stay with the water image, I think each single act of pouring a word into the vessel of a conversation may be the most human gesture we have.
Then again, if we ever learned telepathy, I suppose none of this trouble would be needed.
@Arimitsu , the limit is now the ethics.
The pin only works because it stays local. Try to make it universal and it overwrites the other person's use. That is design.
My research shows: pinning equals asking questions. We do it because we don't understand each other completely. We keep doing it because that incompleteness is the relationship.
I hope people understand the vessel line and that it outlast this thread.
Telepathy would solve the trouble, but the trouble is the relationship.
Check your DMs.