It often feels like words are losing their meaning, with everyone misusing terms they don't fully understand.
I don't want to be a doomer and have have surely unknowingly misused terms as well, but its definitely noticable how these originally clearly defined terms are getting used in entirely new ways.
And it's not just with technical terms like this, it also applies to originally obvious terms such as racism, sexism etc which have lost their original meaning entirely
I can understand the criticism about technical terms (they work better if stable and precise), but regarding the rest: that's just how language works. You can't (and shouldn't) expect words to keep their original meaning forever.
For example, the word "term" comes from the original latin "terminus" that means "end" or "boundary". It only got the meaning you used it for centuries after it was first used in English. See: https://www.etymonline.com/word/term
Oh, it wasn't my intention to criticize anything or anyone in particular with that comment.
I was just pondering that our originally clearly defined terms are rapidly getting used in very confusing manner, which increases the difficulty of a discussion, as participants interpret words very differently.
I dont think that people look up the actual definition of terms in a thesaurus anymore. They hear it in some context and create their own personal definition. It wasn't as obvious before the internet i think, but nowadays everyone is bombarded with technical terms all the time, which likely contributes massively to this increasingly fluid terminology
I don't want to be a doomer and have have surely unknowingly misused terms as well, but its definitely noticable how these originally clearly defined terms are getting used in entirely new ways.
And it's not just with technical terms like this, it also applies to originally obvious terms such as racism, sexism etc which have lost their original meaning entirely