Re: What (not) to write...

In article <1muab2n39j9j8$.1thrcwqcjqc09$.dlg@xxxxxxxxxx>,
"Brian M. Scott" <b.scott@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:10:01 +0100, Helen Hall
<usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:QmtOz7DZeo4IFwbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in
rec.arts.sf.misc:

In message
<ddfr-5518A6.11402530092008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, David
Friedman <ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes

One thing that strikes me in this discussion is that the
most common current meaning doesn't seem to correspond
to even a special case of the (apparently older) and
more general meaning.

If you reduced a population of animals by somehow
identifying the less desirable ones in some sense--say
the dairy cows that gave less milk--and killing or
selling them, that would be a form of culling. But most
of the examples seem to involve killing a random
selection of a wild population, in order to reduce their
numbers.

So it sounds like a meaning that has been swamped by a
euphemism.

Very possibly. These things happen. It happened to
"intercourse". :)

Although one sense in particular is now dominant to the
point of being the default, <intercourse> can still be used
in a variety of senses. A better example is <hussy>,
originally just a variant of <housewife>.

There's nothing particularly euphemistic about the use of
<cull> to mean 'reduce a population by killing off some of
its members'. Indeed, it's a natural development from the
sense 'select for quality', which in turn was a natural
development from 'gather together, collect' (as in Latin
<colligere>, from which <cull> derives via Old French
<cuillir> and Middle English <coilen>). The intended result
of culling a herd or other animal population is often to
improve its overall quality, and a shift of focus from those
positively selected to those negatively selected is rather
natural in that context.

But in the cases being described, there's no selection, except in a very
weak sense of the term--the members to be removed are chosen at random.

--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of
_Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World_,
Cambridge University Press.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: What (not) to write...
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    (rec.arts.sf.misc)
  • Re: What (not) to write...
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