We get lots of calls and emails that take a pessimistic look at the way language changes– which reminded us that the word pessimism itself, just 100 or so years ago, was derided by the curmudgeons of old. People thought the word pessimism was a lazy, inaccurate replacement for despondency. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Etymology of Pessimism”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Arthur Barnette.
It seems like just about every time we open our inbox, there’s an email from somebody saying, “Is this a word? Is that a word? My boss used the word incentivize. Is that really a word?”
And a lot of those emails come accompanied with a certain amount of pessimism about the way the English language is going.
Right.
Well, perhaps they should think about the fact that the word pessimism a century or so ago was thoroughly derided by lots and lots of people.
Yes, indeed.
I didn’t know that.
Let me read you a couple of… Here’s a writer in 1892 who complained about, quote, “The way the word pessimism gets flung about of late. One encounters it at every turn, and it is made to serve as the label of almost every expression of discontent with the existing order of things.”
And then somebody just a few years later wrote, “Who will contribute the first dollar to a fund to furnish definitions of the words optimism and pessimism to writers who use the words as synonyms of cheerfulness and despondency?”
And cheerfulness and despondency seems so, right?
Right?
Who would use those?
We’d have to reach for arthasauruses before those seem like the right choices.
Yeah.
It’s crazy.
I really did not know that, honestly.
Oh, so that’s why your eyes are lining up.
Yeah, of course.
Because there’s so few times that I can do this for you.
No, it’s not that.
It’s that, you know, I now have that little response, right?
That’s another little line to add.
Because when we get those emails and phone calls, we listen because a lot of our job is to listen.
Yes.
And when we reply back, we’re like, “Oh, we’ll wait and see.”
Or maybe we say, “You know, it’s not as bad as you think.”
Or “I think English is healthy. It can take it.”
Right.
There’s a lot of different responses, but here’s a new one.
Here’s a new one.
Yeah, and I mean, the response we usually give is if there’s anything that’s consistent about English, it’s the fact that it changes over time, right?
Right.
I do like the idea, though.
It changes slowly enough that if somebody does come up with a time machine, we will be able to go back a couple hundred years and be okay.
Like, I want to go back and talk to, like, Betsy Ross, you know?
I would love to talk to Betsy.
That sort of stuff.
How did she do that anyway?
Right, all that stuff.
Tell us how the English language is improving your life.
