After having complained the other day about how an altered meaning of a word has become accepted by the masses, I have been reflecting on how these changes come about and how rogues can manipulate them to their advantage. I have a strong preference for avoiding such words, because of this tendency towards interested misuse to confuse and/or bamboozle the populace in general.
The word which started me off was 'bourgeois'. This started off as meaning a town dweller as opposed to those living in a rural environment, whether as master or slave. Under the medieval charters, which were granted to towns by rulers who could see the potential benefits of prosperous centres for trade close to their lands, the inhabitants of these towns were often granted freedoms which were firmly refused out in the country. This led to the word acquiring a meaning which arose from the privileges which town dwellers had over others, and the word thus came to be used to refer to people who are better off than most.
Another irritating much misused word is 'anti-semitic', having an original meaning of being the antithesis of 'semitic'. Ever since the German racist bigot, Wilhelm Marr, reached the deluded conclusion that Jews were a homogenous racial group, which he considered inferior to his own, and called his invented Jewish race 'semitic', he claimed that his actions to oppose these 'Jews' were 'anti-semitic'. This was a most peculiar misuse of the word 'semitic', which until then had been used to group together a certain number of languages which shared a certain form of grammar, and those still in use in today's world include Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and Maltese. Prior to Marr's misuse of the word, semites were those who used semitic languages as their normal means of communication regardless of their race or the colour of their skin. Marr's misuse has however stuck in popular usage, and I remember my startled surprise some years ago to read in a newspaper article that the then king of Saudi Arabia was 'anti-semitic', which made me ponder on whether or not he had become a self-hater.
Other noxious changes are those which twist the meaning for the often obvious benefit of specific groups, and among the most commonly misused are 'aristocracy', which should refer to rule by the best (which concept one then has to define) and 'elitism', which comes from the same root as elected, and should refer to the selected or the chosen. Both these words now tend to be used as if they should include those who have inherited wealth and/or power as well as the self-appointed who hope to hold onto whatever advantages they may already have acquired.
One much used word which does not seem to change is 'oligarchy', which still means the rule by the few and can be seen most clearly in states which have finally broken away from the miseries of Communism, such as Russia and China. It seems to be an almost inevitable stage in the move towards 'democracy', which is a key word whose meaning itself has not changed as much as the society in which it is supposed to exist.
We must always bear in mind that 'democracy' for the ancient Greeks did indeed mean the rule by the people, but they considered membership of said people to be limited solely in their privileged citizens. This is the meaning given to 'democracy' by the Zionists since, and it is enshrined in the extraordinary legislation passed by their Knesset whereby they do not consider the people to extend beyond those whom they categorise as 'Jews' in accordance with Wilhelm Marr's definition (as later adopted by Adolf Hitler).
It is fair to ask the question raised by the sponsorship of 'democracy' by intellectually challenged persons such as George W. Bush and other representatives of his régime as to what they mean when they use the word. My answer is that they probably do not even mean the form of government based on an under-class as did the ancient Greeks or the modern Zionists, but what they wish to defend to the last of their subjects is an 'oligarchy', where only the small group of persons who are wealthy have a say in decisions even though they affect the whole nation. They certainly do not mean a form of government where ordinary people have any power of decision, as many of us most strongly prefer.
My advice is that we should all heed the warning that our use of words can have a terrible effect on what we appear to say, and distortion of this sort can happen without our necessarily meaning so to do. I ask everyone to be sparing in the use of words which have acquired new, and very often deliberately modified, meanings. Let us each determine henceforth to use simpler and more definite words whose meaning cannot be misunderstood.
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