Main Entry: 1ghet·to
Pronunciation: 'ge-(")tO
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural ghettos also ghettoes
Etymology: Italian, from Venetian dialect ghèto island where Jews were forced to live, literally, foundry (located on the island), from ghetàr to cast, from Latin jactare to throw – more at JET
Date: 1611
1 : a quarter of a city in which Jews were formerly required to live
2 : a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure
3 a : an isolated group <a geriatric ghetto> b : a situation that resembles a ghetto especially in conferring inferior status or limiting opportunity <stuck in daytime TV’s ghetto>
After reading Cecil’s Classic column this week, http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a950526.html I came to the realization that I apparently didn’t know the correct definition of the word Ghetto. This wasn’t exceptionally shocking in itself, even though I consider myself fairly intelligent and having a strong vocabulary, but it seems to me that most of the population doesn’t know it either. That of course isn’t shocking either, but I am curious what volume of people equate the word ghetto with meaning a slum, and not a dense region of a minority population? Definition 3b above loosely allows for the “slum” definition to be considered correct, but its pretty marginal.
I guess the question is:
How high is the percentage of people using the wrong definition?
At what point does a predominant characterization of a word by common people succeed in changing a definition?
Seemingly, when individual lexicographers choose to recognize that it has happened, using whatever whimsical basis pleases them. I know there are guidelines, but they aren’t very precise, and it is very much art, not science.
My dictionary has a debate between Dwight Bolinger and William F. Buckley, Jr. included. The topic is: “The prevailing usage of its speakers should be the chief determinant of acceptability in language”. Even Buckley, arguing for the negative, can’t muster much more justification than “because people like me said so when we wrote the dictionaries - so there.” (not a direct quote, obviously).
And it’s common. The word “naked”, for example. George Washington once petitioned the Continental Congress for clothing and supplies for his “naked” troops at Valley Forge. To a modern reader, he seems to be engaging in a bit of hyperbole, since we don’t seriously believe his soldiers were running about in the snowdrifts nude. He was simply being factual. At that time “naked” carried the connotation of being without PROPER clothing, not being without clothing altogether. This also applies to the biblical injunction to “clothe the naked”.
I suspect that fewer than one person in twenty knows the origin and “correct” use of the word. On the other hand, I would guess that most people would still associate an ethnic component with the word, so they haven’t completely lost touch with the “real” meaning (the way most people in the states have lost touch with chauvinist, for example).
The word will have changed completely when you can use it correctly in a regular sentence and your audience goes “Huh?”
I’d make the off-the-cuff observation that the old Elvis Presley song influenced our definition of ghetto. It describes hopeless living conditions without mentioning that it’s a segregated place. It’s the hopelessness and poverty that the song focuses on.
I would suggest that any word that both speaker and listener understand the same way is a word. But I also believe that a word can be assigned a “lesser” status if it is widely considered “incorrect” by even those who use it. So that if many people use “aks” instead of “ask”, than both words are words. But since many “aks” speakers would write “ask” and would use “ask” if they were speaking in a formal setting, this confers some sort of lesser status on this word (aks). This may be what good old Buckly was driving at.
This is not correct. In the original Hebrew, the word used does not have the connotation that you describe.