In college, I read Jacques Barzun with interest. He grew up in France in an upper class family. Later he became a dean at Columbia University. Somewhere, I think, in his "Science: The Glorious Entertainment", he discusses vocabulary. He uses as an example the word "plastic", which once meant "flexible", malleable but in the era of chemistry and invention, many objects that are called "plastic" are rigid and inflexible. So, Barzun said, we have a word that means something and the opposite of that something.
Yesterday's Blondie comic has Dagwood saying he doesn't want to sound like a broken record. His teen son asks his teen older sister what is a broken record. She admits that she isn't sure but thinks it is what her father's generation calls "vinyl". While reading about Google's data handling, I came across an article that says the company does not "sell" data but may "share" or "monetize" it. I have enjoyed writings and recordings of Prof. John McWhorter, a linguist at Columbia who emphasizes that language and word meanings are always changing. I find using Duckduckgo to find information about the use of terms a fun and useful habit.
From Bazun on, there seems to be several sources of steady pressure on vocabulary. If I am accused of a crime, my lawyer may explain that my action does not actually fit the definition of the crime. If I am selling a new or modified product, my marketing team may come with a new spelling or a modified use of a term already in use. When a physicist finds a new particule, he needs a name for it. Back in high school, I read a semanticist's recommendation that words with multiple meanings and definitions have subscripts3 to point to meanings.
I have little interest or ability to be "cool", withit or a model, but I am interested in the meaning of words I encounter. I have found that microscopic life and modern music groups are often the source of words I have never seen before. I just tried "Purple Guts" to see if there was a famous popular music group by that name. Evidently not, but there seems to be an album by that name. I am warned that it employs "explicit lyrics".
