First, I think that the “than” is supposed to be preceded by an “other”; am I right? If I’m wrong, I have no idea what the above sentence is supposed to mean.
Operating on that assumption, I’m somewhat skeptical that the word “homophobe” is significantly more common in day-to-day English than the word “xenophobe,” and that there’s a significant number of people that know the former word but not the latter word. I’m also pretty skeptical that Paul et al have ever objected to the word “xenophobe” with the same vociferousness they object to the word “homophobe.”
Finally, while you said that you no longer objected to the word, you did it in a rather patronizing fashion:
In other words, in the middle of your absolution, you ding them again.
"They" aren’t misappropriating anything!
The word follows an accepted pattern. Its meaning is clear. The dictionary gives the same meaning that people use in common parlance.
You should accept the word because it’s a good word, not because it’s a tiny sin.
Note that I’m not accusing you of being a homophobe in any way, shape, or form. It’s just that I love the language, and I love arguing about the language, and I think you’re dead wrong on this issue from a purely linguistic standpoint.
Damn, it isn’t secret anymore? And I was so close to my next promotion (Evil Genius). I was getting tired of the title Supervillain. I guess our secret plan for world domination is still on track?
Actually, “hydrophobia” is an excellent example of a word expanding beyond its etymological roots. Its original meaning is indeed “fear of water”. Its common understanding now is “rabies”, and it got there because
RAREBIT, n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and that riz-de-veau a la financière is not the smile of a calf prepared after the recipe of a she banker.
Isn’t it ironic that a lot of people in favor of the term “homophobe” meaning aversion expound on changing of language and insist that language can and does change based on popular usage, then we have someone insisting that if the majority of the populace misuses a term, it still retains its old, superceded, meaning (such as “liberal”)?
Not really. Folks who advocate equality don’t have a hive mind, and may disagree on some subjects; such a disagreement doesn’t constitute irony.
In any case, words don’t have inherent meaning: they only have what meaning the speaker (or writer, etc.) and the listener (reader, etc.) understand them to have. Their meaning is in their conveyance of information. Therefore, words may have multiple and even contradictory meanings, depending on the context and on the understanding of the speaker and audience.
I disagree with kung fu lola that a fallacy is involved in referring to the popular usage of the word. Not a hive mind, remember.
Your question still doesn’t make sense. First, there’s no “if” about it; the “-phobia” suffix indicates fear or aversion. This is nothing new. Anyone not aware of this obviously has a limited vocabulary. I’ve had reason to teach this suffix to my EFL students on multiple occasions, and I always explain it as meaning “fear or hate”. It would be easier to explain it as meaning simply “fear”, but I think it’s just as important for them to be able to figure out the meaning of words like “photophobia” and “xenophobia” as “claustrophobia” and “agoraphobia”.
Actually, from a purely practical perspective, if I were forced to choose between “fear” and “hate” when explaining the meaning of “-phobia”, I’d go with just “hate”. This would be an incomplete definition, but unless you’re in the mental health field you’ll probably have little reason to ever discuss phobias in the psychiatric sense. “Xenophobia” at least is a word you might encounter while reading a mainstream newspaper or magazine, and one especially likely to be useful to the sort of person interested in mastering a foreign language in the first place.
Secondly, what the hell kind of a person hates water? Someone who wouldn’t survive more than a couple of days, which is just as well as they’d be miserable on our water-covered planet and in their water-filled body anyway. “I prefer beverages with a little more flavor” or “I don’t really enjoy swimming” isn’t hatred of water.
If there are people who hate water the way xenophobes hate foreigners (“Evaporate back where you came from! That’s right, get out of here before I beat you into seperate atoms of hydrogen and oxygen!”) then yeah, I’d say they’ve got hydrophobia. Not in the “rabies” sense of course, but there’s no better English word to describe an irrational aversion to good ol’ H2O.
Actually, I was making the more subtle point that a lot of people believe that it means exclusively “fear of” homosexuals, because it feeds into their smug need to put egalitarians in the wrong. However, ** “phobia” is correctly used to mean “hatred of” as well**, and not just in the case of “homophobia”. Lots of other examples of this have been shown in this thread, and they exist not because of popularity, but because the word “phobia” really does have a secondary meaning, and that meaning was being used even before the concept of “homophobia” existed.
It’s a popular notion that people fighting for gay rights are using the word “phobia” wrongly, but that doesn’t mean it’s right.
You are correct. Thank you for filling in my blank spaces.
You are the second poster so far to take what I said this way. That isn’t how I meant it but I can easily see how it appears that way. What I meant was that if in my view (the reason for my original objection, that is) the word had been misappropriated, etc. I think we all agree the word homophobe has only recently entered the lexicon (and the dictionary) in its current usage. I was saying that if it seemed to me that it had been misappropriated, it still wasn’t a big deal.
