Word Associations.

[Quindiana Jones]

Spam. There's a word that, due to the wonders of technology, I now have a new definition of. Spam being delicious, and funny/pointless/annoying.

Gay. There's another one, though not due to the internet. Probably due to video games or something...I dunno, ask my nan.

I'm curious as to why definitions of words suddenly(ish) change. How do people just decide that one word means something different all of a sudden? How, damnit, HOW???

[Luara]

Imagination

[Quindiana Jones]

Explain, please?

[Luara]

maybe the words have a special meaning and reminds them things... and to the other people that answer seems wrong, but it isnt.


but sometimes they do that on porpuse v_v

[Serapy]

Sorta like a trend. E.g. when a person doesn't understand the meaning of the word, he/she finds out, and then uses that word to prove her/his intelligence. That trend grows since then.

[Aerith's Knight]

spam, spectaculary powerful ass monkey

[Tavrobel]

On a purely language evolution standpoint, isolation and a bias toward how things are spoken with a particular accent.

As for sudden changes within a language, probably someone uses it in a derisive manner at first, and it becomes more commonly used. When at last people do use it more frequently, most do not actually intend to use it in a pejorative manner, but as to describe something else. Gay would be a good example, as it went from:

Happy --> Homosexual --> Lame (though it is still used concurrently with the previous definition)

Or perhaps a change in who uses it. The N-word is another good example in the US. At first it was black-black, generally more senior slaves talking down to newbies. Then it went to white-black, where masters would scold. Afterward, when this word was left alone, it represented hate and malice. Now it is once again used black-black (God forbid whites or Asians use it), in a jovial or delightful manner. At this point, it is now a more crude, black-only form of the second person.

Wow does this post sound 100% racist and borderline uninformed. Excellence at its finest.

[Luara]

I still like it thought

[dragontamer]

LOL!
Blunt, i'll warent, but truthful in histoligical terms.

[BardTard]

If I say "that's gay" it means "that's awesome."

[Big D]

Spam: After the Monty Python sketch with Vikings in a cafe singing about spam, the word became associated with needless repetition of messages. It eventually migrated onto newsgroups, then eventually onto the real internets.

Using 'gay' to mean 'bad' or 'abnormal' is just a regrettable extension of the old belief that homosexuality is an inferior abnormality. Just like 'queer' used to be a derogatory term for a homosexual man, as 'queer' means abnormal, malformed, unusual, etc. When someone says 'your shirt is totally gay', they mean either that it looks like something a gay person would like, or they mean that your shirt is inferior, emasculating, weird, and not in accordance with the majority.

Most of these word associations come about for a reason, though the reason can be lost pretty quickly sometimes, if it's even obvious at the start.

Personally, I'd like to know why snowboarders think that favourable conditions are 'sick'. It sounds so idiotic to me. "My sick was really fat!"