On ABC’s “Cop Rock”, a judge used the term scumbag. And I don’t care. Am I a rude person? Am I embracing or accepting vulgarisms in today’s culture? No. The simple fact is that I didn’t know where the word came from, what it originally meant. What does it mean today? It’s another word for jerk, miscreant, or delinquent. But wait, none of those words means the same as the others! So what does it mean? Confusingly enough, it means nothing.

Language is a living organism: It changes and grows as necessary. As with all organisms, the more widespread something is, the more likely it is to survive, and the English language currently circles the globe. It’s not universal, by any means, but it is the language of trade, probably so common as a result of the reach of the British Empire, an economic giant. As an organism sheds skin, so does a language. It adapts to its surroundings, which change sometimes as frequently as once-per-decade. Like organisms, some of the language’s adaptations remain stable through its future changes, like cool, but others, like daddio and stoopid(1), are dropped from the popular vocabulary, leaving writers like me guessing at the spelling of the former and the logic of the latter.

Words used to mean something, but the latest evolution of language seems to have changed that, or at least begun to. Don’t believe me? Well then, get with it, get in the game, plug in—what the heck did I just say? I told you to catch up to current trends, to update your understanding. I just said the same thing five times, in five entirely different ways. I spoke in metaphors that you couldn’t possibly have understood without a working knowledge of the language as it exists today. This interesting realization has occurred to me in the past, and it resurfaced a few days ago, when I was having a conversation in which the word homophobic came up (was spoken). A coworker walked by, overheard the word, and decided to correct me on its use: “What you’re referring to isn’t homophobia. Homophobia is the fear of homosexuals or homosexuality, whereas what you’re talking about is an unacceptance of them.” At first, I thought it quite a silly thing to say—everyone(2) knows what homophobia is. But as I thought about it, I came to a completely different realization, though still one that disputed his assertion.

The point of any language is communication. When a new word is introduced, it must be taught before it can be understood. If the word is consistently taught incorrectly, then it comes to mean what it was taught to mean, regardless of the semantics involved. Such is how we come to accept such ridiculous phrases as I could care less—after all, if you could care less, then you must care somewhat, which is exactly the opposite of what the phrase has come to mean.

Naturally, I can’t blame any one person or group for the instability of the language, because it is impossible to distinguish between a cause and an effect. Actually, in the case of the evolution of language, I don’t think there is any separation of the two; have you ever played “telephone” (also known as “purple monkey dishwasher”, thanks to an episode of “The Simpsons”), and tried to blame any one person in the line for the miscommunication of the message? It’s easy enough, though, to identify one of the middlemen, one group playing the role of a catalyst in this new trend of meaningless language: the Politically Correct.

The biggest problem with the PC, aside from their belief that euphemisms can make the world a better place, is the fact that they’re even more unstable than the language, and so accelerate its *cough* evolution by continuously reconsidering what they find appropriate, and ramming their latest findings down our throats. Ironically, many people described by the aforementioned terms like those terms better than the PC terms.

On the other side of the spectrum are the dinosaurs, the people who insist that speakers of the English language adhere strictly to the rules of the Latin language(3). The metaphor of a language as a living organism is not mine alone; it has existed for quite some time, and Latin has come to be known as a dead one. Demanding that speakers of English use exclusively Latin grammar is akin to demanding that women lay eggs rather than bear infants, simply because it’s what the dinosaurs used to do. The PC equivalent of this extreme would be to say that the duck-billed platypus doesn’t lay eggs because it is a mammal, and would be offended should we imply otherwise.

When caught between two ridiculous extremes, those of us who live neither in history nor in fantasy must try to find a way to communicate without offending either. This proves to be impossible, given the selection of relevant words to choose from—from which to choose—so we make use of metaphor, describing one thing by equating it to someone else—which is how words begin to lose their meaning. These metaphors are absorbed into the mainstream, accepted, then denounced by the extremists, either because of an ancient rule or a new sensibility(4).

We have constructed morphemes to adapt nouns into verbs, and verbs into adverbs—pretty much anything into anything else. We use these words (like confusingly—last sentence, first paragraph of this piece) and we are understood. There are even games, like “Charades”, and “Win, Lose, or Draw”, in which messages must be communicated without using words. Women often communicate more with the tone of their voices than with their words, while men sometimes absentmindedly hold simple conversations using only grunts.

All of these examples are possible because communication is contextual: we don't listen to what people say; we listen to what they mean. This is how some people come to think that they needn't bother with knowing how to say what they mean; after all, people will get it anyway, right? And so the semantic meanings of words are lost to obscurity.

I can’t say when the deterioration of semantics began. I don’t know who decided that the name of one of the four food groups could translate roughly into “homosexuals and people with no neural activity”. I don’t know why one of the more potent insults of our language resembles a suggestion of sexual intercourse. And I didn’t know that a scumbag was a vulgar euphemism for a condom—rather, that’s what it was originally. It’s not anymore, if you know what I mean.

(1)A homonym for “stupid” came to be a compliment in the 1990s.

(2)Everyone—this word is being used in hyperbole, instead of its literal meaning.

(3)Example: they condemn the split infinitive because the Latin language didn’t allow for it—infinitive verbs did not comprise two words, but one.

(4) In this context, the intended meaning of the word sensibility should be clear, though comparing this connotation to the denotation presents a migraine of an oxymoron.

And can anyone tell me what heterosexuality has to do with geometry?