Yesterday's post was about changes in practice in our lives over time. Two responses related to the post have come back. One said a granddaughter wondered what an ice cube tray was:
She had only experienced ice pieces falling from a gadget on the front door of the refrigerator. The other message reported recalling from childhood the unpleasant experience of getting one's ponytail hairdo caught in the wringer of an older type of washing machine.
Our language is always changing, too. I think it is ok to describe some of the changes as widening. I gather that English has often been enriched by the addition of words and concepts from other languages. The part of the washer that caught a girl's hair is a "wringer", not a "ringer". With the "w", the word derives from the action of twisting a cloth tightly to expel water from it. Without the w, it refers to the clapper in a bell or the person ringing a bell to make it sound.
Another change I notice relates to the word 'unique'. The word used to mean 'the only' as in "I am unique" = there is no other me. I am the only one. My teachers often emphasized that I should not posit degrees of uniqueness, as in "His poems are very unique." They wanted me to say "His poems are very unusual" or "atypical". But I hear and see many uses of intensifiers in front of "unique".
