That's a good point.Hanslune wrote:Absolutely I read and write material that is based in the 1830's and it's sometimes hard to understand what is implied because the words then had different meanings - which were clear to everyone then but shadowy to us now.
We often say that a particular word "means" a certain thing. But, what we really "mean" when we say this is that a person means or intends a certain thing when that person uses that word. Words do not define themselves. People define words.
The meanings of at least some words change over a long period of time -- because people start using the words to signify something different from what was formerly signified.
Take the word "awful." One of the most common meanings of that word today is "extremely disagreeable or objectionable". Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, p. 79, G.&C. Merriam Co. (8th ed. 1976). But, I understand that a long time ago, the word "awful" was used to mean what we would today describe as "awesome", in the sense of "deserving of reverence or admiration" -- as in "Hey, that performance was totally awesome, dude!".