I’ve had a theory since childhood (one of many) which I would love to explore more fully, but I need the appropriate linguisitic terms, and neither my knowledge, nor that of a close linguist friend, seems to be turning them up.
We have, in the English Language, a long academic history of attending to etymology. It’s so ingrained that we rarely question it.
However, as much as I love etymology, in my opinion that our attention to it is misplaced o grossly overemphasized. On one hand, most students of the subject will agree that, in ‘interesting’ [nonobvious, puzzling, or even much-studied] cases often deveolve to litttle more than “folk etymology”, however plausible the derivation may be. Indeed, on closer examination, it turns out that several current ethical or religious notions are based on flawed etymologies.
(The Abrahamic tradition (Judaism. Christianity and Islam) underlying Western or Middle Eastern cultures contains many examples of fundamental "middle’ or “late” [i.e. nonfounding] religious precepts based on now-discredited etymological links. For that matter [since I don’t want people to think I am slamming etymologists], many are based on notions that any competent etymologist can easily disprove.
There is little doubt that words often mold our thoughts. The history of usage and interpretation of words is ithe subject that etymology seeks to explore, but it can at best give part of the picture – i.e. it is valuable but inherently flawed . Indeed the underlying terminology of etymology shows the flaw of the approach: we speak of linguistic “roots” as if lineage were by direct descent, but it clearly isn’t. No root-based analysis can explain why “gay” or “stalking” or “macho” or “chip” [integrated circuit] --or for that matter “urban legend”-- emerged over many plausible competitors to be the overwhelmingly predominant term that will mold usage, thought and future linguisitic evolution.
At some point, a word just catches on. Indeed, “Word!” (once “Word up!”) is a good example. Rightly or wrongly, I maintain it was descended from “Verba sat sapienti sufficit” via Shakespeare’s translation of the meme “a word to the wise is sufficient”. The concept permeates our culture, but pop etymologists seem curiously loath to credit the originators [or their culture] with reading Shakespeare in high school, much less resonating with a phrase that traces back in our culture past Classical Latin to Classical/Ancient Greek.
While speak of linguistic roots, and I do feel that a term/word must generally be clear enough by analogy to prior usage (at least to some influential class) if it is to spread through the general population, i believe at least an equal number of “interesting cases” (a disproportionately influential minority, IMHO) are not directly traceable by this method. In my own mind, I consider it the diference between genealogy and individual accomplishment or evolution
I think this is well illustrated --perhaps inarguably-- by many cases where the origin is concretely provable. Politics offers many irrefutable examples. Nothing in the word “star” and little in the word “wars” leads directly to Reagan’s Stategic Defense Initiative; and neither “new” nor “deal” says much about FDR’s social policy expect in the context of the politics of the time. The meaning of a “Star Wars Initiative” might’ve seemed clear to Americans in 1981-82, but it would have been seemed like complete comic book gibberish in 1976. The “New Deal”, as discussed in 1932, has little or no relation to the Democratic policy or rhetoric of 1924 or 1928. (It was tricky to explain even in its first years of implementation, and was --perhaps rightfully-- called “communist” [i.e. in line with the Soviet rhetoric of the time] by many lifelong Democrats – members and leaders of the longstanding socially conservative party, back then. No matter what your TwenCen history teacher hinted was no freakish accident that Lincoln was a Republican
In geology or biology we may call it “punctuated equilibrium”, in everyay language, we say a phrase “catches on” – no less discriptive that the ten-dollar word.
So what do we call that subject? the study of the forward-looking evolution of linguisitic usage, as opposed to etymology’s often backward looking genealogy. Since I fear I phrased it badly, let me clarify: too often etymology emphasizes where a word “came from” [“roots”, phylogeny] when it is often more important how/why it predominated over the competing synonyms/memes of that era.
Okay, I’ve ranted poorly long enough. By now a lot of you must be primed and aching with terms for me to Google. I know the notion isn’t original with me. I can hardly imagine that any State Spelling Bee champ in the last half-century, 4th grade or 8th, hasn’t pondered this.
(Okay. I’m overstating. The vast majority of Spelling Champs I’ve met have being gloriously bright and multifaceted, but a few (you probably don’t know who you are, but everyone else does) were borderline idiot savants or superclerks. THEY probably consider Etymology to be scientific fact.)
Fire away. It won’t be the first drubbing I took gladly to learn a thing ot two.
(That is, assuming I’m at all right about what you’re trying to say.)