Re: "crew" and "butch"

The Bob Cunningham entity posted thusly:

On Sun, 27 Aug 2006 20:50:54 -0600, Oleg Lego
<rat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

The Bob Cunningham entity posted thusly:

So "butch haircut" is another in a long list of terms that
can't be used for a general readership without explanation.
That is, it's skunked.

Is it? Perhaps I don't fully understand the meaning of "skunked" in
this context, but it would seem to me that regional differences in a
word is something different than skunking.

Good point. I think skunkiness depends upon intended
audience. In a community where everyone knows only one
definition of a word, that word is not skunked. But if the
same word has different meanings in another environment
where it's to be used, and if the context in which the two
meanings are likely to be used is the same, then using the
word can risk serious misunderstanding, and it should be
defined with each use. A word meeting those conditions is
skunked.

I agree, though I think there must be words that are skunked for
virtually all audiences. I was going to use "gay" as an example, but
it has probably gone beyond "skunked" to some status I might describe
as "completely useless to describe anything hut sexuality".

One I would call "skunked is "media". It has gone from being a word
describing a format for delivering information to being a group of
people representing same, and even to a single person representing one
of the media; all while retaining each previous meaning or nuance.

Would you consider "papoose", "fanny", and "ring" skunked words?

I'm not aware of "papoose" having more than one meaning, and
I don't know of any meaning of "ring" that's relevant to
this discussion.

There was a discussion here a few years ago, in which a surprisingly
large number of folks used "papoose" to describe the thing that a
papoose is carried in.

A "ring" on a hob, is virtually unknown in North America. We would
call them "burners" on a "stovetop" or on a "stove" or on a "range".

I included that one in particular, as I don't see it as being skunked.
It's just another name for an object, and since there is no object on
a stovetop that would be called a "ring" in North America, there
really isn't any confusion.

In my humble opinion, a word having more than one meaning
doesn't mean it's skunked. It's skunked only if the
different meanings are likely to be used in the same context
where the intended meaning is so ambiguous as to be
potentially seriously misleading.

Eggs, Zachary!

.

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