Eli5: Does every culture go through phases where words get ruined (literally, actually, etc…) by over/misuse? Also why?
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Authors poets journalists and anyone with influence will use words creatively even poetically. This makes their copy interesting to the reader, but stretches definitions.
One example I remember from study as a youth was the word ‘soon’ , an Anglo Saxon word meaning now. I saw it describing someone getting beheaded. ‘They died soon’.
Maybe in this case humor is to blame for meaning shift.
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