Working class no longer has the meaning it did to the populace. According to today’s dictionary, It should be unskilled, But most include skilled engineers etc. That no longer applies. The deffintion before that was between income earning asset ownership or not. Defined working vs middle class. No one really follows that any more.
Language evolves as its usage and definitions change, is a fact of history. And the evidence clearly points to a dilution in the meaning of classes in general. Heck, even upper class in no longer limited to those of aristocratic birth.
I also remember something about the meaning of goat changing a few hundred years back. Mainly due to science excluding sheep from the definition. But i’ve no idea where I heard that. Likely on eons. Glass used to refer to a volcanic process that created clearing stone. The current man-made product def did not exist. But the volcanic stuff is still called glass. So yeah, that one likely counts as expanded rather than evolved.
I’ll give you a freebie. Cloud has not really changed its meaning since the Norman conquest.
Unskilled vs skilled is in the dictionary. Working class according to the dictionary is only unskilled labour. Whereas society provides multiple examples of modern skilled labour in the form of plumbers electricians engineers heck even steel working is a skill many do not have. So evidence of that one is everywhere. But later Ill provide some documented and anecdotal evidence on the changes of the definition of skilled labour. And with it, working class.
Older working class def (income based assets) are from Victorian times. I am visually impaired and heading out for a few weeks. So atm do not have the time to find the documentation in my references. But will contact you in a few weeks when I’m back at home. And have time to search.
Some language does.
Yes but even those are not 100% Go back before modern geology (Likely 1300s and before) Granite just meant and unyielding rock. (at least in the south of England) Modern geology gave it a more specific type of stone with crystalline structure. (a modern geologist may cringe at that def as well.)
As for sky. We now have a definition of the sky being just earths atmosphere. Yet 1000 years ago, Brits would suggest stars are in the sky. Even early astronomers had no real concept of space vs the sky. Around the 1200s we started to conceive of something beyond the sky, and by the 1600s newton had a pretty clear idea of the movement of other planes. But really not until flight was it accepted that there may be a limit to our atmosphere. The idea of something beyond what we think of as sky is still relatively modern. But today no one thinks of Venus/Mars etc as being in the sky.
All language evolves, just some over decades, some over centuries. Some based on scientific understanding. More based on how the community understands and needs to communicate. Words like phone have evolved in my lifetime. (landlines were all that existed until my 20s.) Words like Computer in my parent’s lifetime. (Referred to a mathematically skilled person until the late 1960s)
But even in the 1960 computers were considered working class. While engineers were not. At that time, women were never considered skilled labour due to… Well if we’re honest, men of the time being arseholes.
Now, if we go back to my grandmother. Look up the ford sewing strikes of 1968. My gran was part of that. A time when the UK was forced to change the very definition of skilled labour to include women. And likely the start of the language used to define working class as more than just unskilled labour. Pulling other degree level skills into the definition.
So yeah, Lang evolves at different speeds. Some pretty darn fast.
Your welcome to. But evidence disagrees.
Working class no longer has the meaning it did to the populace. According to today’s dictionary, It should be unskilled, But most include skilled engineers etc. That no longer applies. The deffintion before that was between income earning asset ownership or not. Defined working vs middle class. No one really follows that any more.
Language evolves as its usage and definitions change, is a fact of history. And the evidence clearly points to a dilution in the meaning of classes in general. Heck, even upper class in no longer limited to those of aristocratic birth.
Are you able to provide references to some of that?
Some language does. The word “granite” means the same now as it did in 1900. Same with “sky” and “goat” and “glass”. And “working class”.
I also remember something about the meaning of goat changing a few hundred years back. Mainly due to science excluding sheep from the definition. But i’ve no idea where I heard that. Likely on eons. Glass used to refer to a volcanic process that created clearing stone. The current man-made product def did not exist. But the volcanic stuff is still called glass. So yeah, that one likely counts as expanded rather than evolved.
I’ll give you a freebie. Cloud has not really changed its meaning since the Norman conquest.
Unskilled vs skilled is in the dictionary. Working class according to the dictionary is only unskilled labour. Whereas society provides multiple examples of modern skilled labour in the form of plumbers electricians engineers heck even steel working is a skill many do not have. So evidence of that one is everywhere. But later Ill provide some documented and anecdotal evidence on the changes of the definition of skilled labour. And with it, working class.
Older working class def (income based assets) are from Victorian times. I am visually impaired and heading out for a few weeks. So atm do not have the time to find the documentation in my references. But will contact you in a few weeks when I’m back at home. And have time to search.
Yes but even those are not 100% Go back before modern geology (Likely 1300s and before) Granite just meant and unyielding rock. (at least in the south of England) Modern geology gave it a more specific type of stone with crystalline structure. (a modern geologist may cringe at that def as well.)
As for sky. We now have a definition of the sky being just earths atmosphere. Yet 1000 years ago, Brits would suggest stars are in the sky. Even early astronomers had no real concept of space vs the sky. Around the 1200s we started to conceive of something beyond the sky, and by the 1600s newton had a pretty clear idea of the movement of other planes. But really not until flight was it accepted that there may be a limit to our atmosphere. The idea of something beyond what we think of as sky is still relatively modern. But today no one thinks of Venus/Mars etc as being in the sky.
All language evolves, just some over decades, some over centuries. Some based on scientific understanding. More based on how the community understands and needs to communicate. Words like phone have evolved in my lifetime. (landlines were all that existed until my 20s.) Words like Computer in my parent’s lifetime. (Referred to a mathematically skilled person until the late 1960s)
But even in the 1960 computers were considered working class. While engineers were not. At that time, women were never considered skilled labour due to… Well if we’re honest, men of the time being arseholes.
Now, if we go back to my grandmother. Look up the ford sewing strikes of 1968. My gran was part of that. A time when the UK was forced to change the very definition of skilled labour to include women. And likely the start of the language used to define working class as more than just unskilled labour. Pulling other degree level skills into the definition.
So yeah, Lang evolves at different speeds. Some pretty darn fast.