Glob-a-log

Isn’t it strange how language works? Especially the way the meaning of words – and even expressions – can change over time.

Take a simple word like ’square.’ The adjective, I mean. Originally, in the days that John Wayne was the default model of heroism, it was seen as one of the ultimate compliments you could give to the male of our species. To be square was to possess the holy trinity of masculine virtues: simplicity, courage & honesty.

Then the Sixties arrived and being square became the biggest fear, and the almost ritual insult one generation levelled at the other. If you were square, you were so hopelessly ‘out of it’, lost and backwards that even Jane Fonda wouldn’t be able to travel there to pose for peace.

Of course, in a way, all language is code – and for code to be both attractive and effective, it needs to change, from time to time. The easiest way to do this is by reversing the meaning of words. Generational clashes often drive these reversals, as we’ve seen with the word ’square’ but you can also observe this process with the word ‘bad’ that, like its predecessor ‘wicked’, has come to mean the exact opposite.

As I already mentioned, it’s not just single words that can adopt new and contrasting meaning. The same is true for certain expressions.

So, in the thirties, when Hitler and Mussolini were in power, their apologists would say that, under these regimes, at least the trains ran on time.

Later, after the second world war, the expression ‘But at least the trains run on time’ became a sort of shorthand for any kind of dictatorship and its apologists. In other words, what had been a case for the defence became a case for the prosecution.

That doesn’t mean that trains running on time are a bad thing, per se.

Most people like their trains to stick to the announced schedules, or at least approximate these time tables – and if they don’t, well, things can get messy, as the authorities in Argentina found out.

Talking about language, and expressions that could use a face-lift, this Argentine story does show that a picture of a burning train is worth a thousand words of lame government excuses:

Outraged commuters in Argentina have set fire to a train, because they were angry about morning rush hour delays. Images of the charred train at Merlo station, in the west of the capital, Buenos Aires, have appeared on Argentine television. At nearby Castelar, passengers hurled stones at the ticket office and blocked the rails.

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 15:58 and is filed under Columns, Politics, Satire. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.