Words don’t always mean what they used to.
Momentarily used to mean ‘for a moment’, and now it means ‘in a moment’. And many people don’t take literally literally. How do we know when it’s time to give the old meaning the old heave-ho?
Linguist Daniel Midgley looks at some attempts to do just that, on this week’s Talk the Talk.
Listen to this episode
You can listen to all the episodes of Talk the Talk by pasting this URL into your podlistener.
http://danielmidgley.com/talkthetalk/talk_classic.xml
Show notes
The original Slate article by Ben Yagoda
http://www.slate.com/id/2290536/
A response from The Economist
http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/04/change