Words that have lost their value

Probably hate here too, people seem to use it for even the slightest irritation, especially on tumblr. It's seemingly become so general since people use it for everything. Most times, like Sanc said, dislike can replace it.

 

For me, and I am also very guilty of this, words such as "awesome" and "incredible" have lost nearly all of their meaning. Their meaning, going by definition, should be more than any other word at our disposal.

"Awesome" means "causing or inspiring awe," which is "a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder." When we use "awesome" to describe something, the definition is saying that we are struck with reverence and slight fear by what we are describing. It's one of the most powerful feelings of respect and wonder that we have in our capacity.

"Incredible" means "impossible to believe." It means that what we are describing is so great, that it literally cannot be believed. Using that word implies that what we are describing is beyond any form of other description, and is only capable of being described by its impossibility for any description of it to be believed.

These words held enormous clout, resting at the top of our descriptive ability in the human language. And what do they mean now? When somebody says something is awesome and incredible, do you automatically drop what you're doing and rush to see what awe-inspiring thing beating any attempt at description has been found?

No, you probably don't, because it's most likely a youtube video or a meme or something. We throw around these words at any little old thing, and I do it too. But I'll use a quote from C.S. Lewis to explain the problem with this:

"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very;" otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite."

 

Gay

A word that once meant in good humor/in a good mood.

It's modern use is "homosexual" with a negative connotation.


Queer

Once a word that meant strange.

Now just another of the millions of homosexual/just plain sexual terms, because we always need to transform more words into sex terms.


And don't get me started on all the replacement words for "penis".

@[member='shinygiratinaz'],

This reminds me of a V-Sauce video that talked about such a thing. -some and -ful were used as positive or negative (Respectively) suffixes to certain words to depict emotions.

If to see a war elephant fighting on your side is awesome, would being on the receiving end of it's attacks not be awful?

 

Words or phrases I can think of that lost meaning, in no particular order:
"Love", "Best/Worst ____ Ever", "Dank"
I'll probably have more later, but these are the ones that immediately come to mind. Let's delve, shall we?

Love - This one is probably by far one of the worst offenders of things that have become utterly devoid of meaning, though the above examples of 'awesome' and 'gay' surpass that (and 'literally' has remained the prime example for years). However, as to why 'love' is so far up on this list is because it's an ubiquitous buzzword that is used to describe various stages or expressions of love; the phrases "I love children", "I love my dog", "I love doughnuts", and "I love my spouse" all use the term correctly, but the type of love they're speaking of in each case is very clearly different.
Usually when people are introduced to a new thing that they like greatly, they'll tend to use the word 'love' though most likely in the same connotation as the 3rd example. This might just be a case of not having enough words in the English language to describe, such as the case of the 3rd-person gender-neutral pronoun (the words 'he' and 'they' are used most often, with the former preferred as it is still singular and not plural, but outside of inventing new words like 'xe', or utilising slang like 'dude' which has issues of its own, English doesn't actually have this pronoun), but perhaps it's a mixture of both these things.

"Best/Worst _____ Ever" - I, and a few other people I know, are guilty of this one. We usually say this in response to seeing, witnessing, or trying a new thing that we find we really like. Of course, they can't all be the best thing ever, and if we were to actually rank them out, we would find that each thing has a varying level of like to each of us, and only one (or maybe two, if tied) thing could truly be the best thing ever. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this. Sadder still, I don't know where I picked up this habit.

"Dank" - This is a weird one largely because it keeps shifting definitions. Its original correct definition is "unpleasantly damp or humid", usually used in context to things like tunnels in a sewer system, a greenhouse that easily traps sunlight and heat, or the southern United States in the summer. Eventually (and I'm not sure when or how - I'll have to research) the word slipped into the marijuana subculture, where it was used as an adjective meaning "high-quality", in the phrase "dank weed". Later on, as even marijuana became memetic (largely due to the pervasiveness of '420'), it became used to describe memes as well, keeping its meaning of "high-quality"...mostly. Nowadays people just use the word "dank" to describe any meme they like, so much so that, unless the word "dank" is used in its original definition of referring to humidity, it has virtually zero impact.

 

Epic.

*sigh*

I'm sorry, but when you bowled 250, that was not epic. Nor was that pop concert you went to. Nor is your 600k top score in Smash 4's classic mode. Just not epic.

Hercules' twelve labors were epic. Your grandparent's escape from a Nazi death camp is epic. The tone of some musical scores are epic by proxy to the thing they are enhancing.

That word means almost nothing thanks to so many 13-18s using it to describe any moderately interesting or exciting event. I wish it still meant something.

 

I was supposed to reply earlier, but I had to go. Anyway, @[member="Sanctuary"] had most of the words I was going to say. I really believe that words have lost their meanings over time. I do not want to repeat anymore words that have been already said, so I'll add a few more:

- Random: This word has lost it's meaning, no doubt. It originally meant "made, done or happening without method or conscience decision." Do you hear many people use 'Random' with this meaning? What they mean is odd, unusual or unexpected. I cannot see a big difference actually, but where I live, many people seem to overuse this word in terrible ways.

- Massive: Lot's of people misuse this word. This word does mean big; but large, heavy and solid. I hear people say, "I had this massive load of homework" for just two chapters of mathematics. It isn't massive at all.

- Crazy: I am a victim of this one. My best friend calls me crazy, cough cough: I am not mad. I'm not even silly. It's been misused to describe "fun" or "overly enthusiastic".

 

Many swear words. I won't list them, but they have a big thing. Swear words used to be saved for very bad things. Now saying "Beep you!" Is said as nonchalantly as "Hi". I usually save swear words for when i want to put a head through a wall.

 

SLAY.

The amount of times I have seen slay has killed me. "Slay girl slay" I get it. Your bias or someone you look up to is doing amazing. However, when the comments are just the same words over and over, is it really "slaying" or is it killing the comments section.