Some people say, “Oh, he has a temper!” when they mean “an inability to control anger.” But temper means “the ability to control emotional volatility.” Someone says, “He has a terrible temper” and someone who doesn’t know the word assumes from context that it means “a terrible tendency to get angry” instead of a “terrible inability to control anger.” So that “temper” is then used alone, in the opposite of its original meaning.
(Many of my word usage pet peeves are words that begin to take on the opposite meaning due to misunderstanding and misuse.)
Well, I’m sure the word “temperamental” also causes its share of misuse too.
However, at least one of dictionary.com’s entries on this word have your “mistaken” definition listed before your “real” definition (though at least one also has the word origin, which is of course your “real” definition).
Many words are changing their meanings over time. Have you ever said “I am nauseous”? Were you making other people sick at the time? How about the word “organic”? I can assure you that ALL the food I have ever eaten was organic according to the original meaning including all the food drenched with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. “Narcotic”? Well, I highly doubt crystal meth has put many people to sleep or done much as a pain killer but law enforcement still calls it a narcotic. Complaining that words have changed meanings doesn’t have much traction around here.
It’s just a little annoyance I have that I wanted to share with a few thousand of my closest friends for the sake of amusement (see forum title). I certainly don’t hope to change direction of the language. Second, to be clear, I am very aware of the natural way that words change meanings over time–but in this case some people use it in the opposite way of its original meaning, which came about through ignorance. A contrasting example is the slang usage of “sick” which takes on a radically different meaning than the conventional one, but not because the original word was misunderstood (perhaps as a desire to annoy one’s parents).
Getting your panties in a twist about it is sort of pointless. However, “here’s a bunch of words which have had their original meaning reversed, isn’t language fascinating” could be an interesting thread.
Don’t you have that backwards. The traditional meaning of “presently” is after a short time, not right now. And yes, although both meanings are presently correct, I don’t like it one bit.
How do you use presently to indicate later, or after a short time? Can someone give an example? I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard it used in that context.
Presently, were using revision 2 of the procedure.
I am presently driving a Hyundai.
These sentences reflect the immediate time, not some future point.
