A thread on Jurassic Park got me thinking: before 1993, if you said the word “Raptor”, a person who knew the word (and it wasn’t that well known a word) would picture a bird because that was the definition of the word. It was a bird of prey.
However, JP was such a big hit and the Raptors made such a huge impression on the culture that if you say “Raptor” now, 9 out of 10 will picture a lizard. The word’s meaning effectively changed.
Setting aside catchphrases that enter our culture (every knows what “May the Force Be With You” means even if they never saw Star Wars), any other examples of something like this?
I must be the 1 in 10 who didn’t change the normal meaning of that word, because if I see “raptor” out of context, I think bird of prey. But I bet it’s higher than 1 in 10.
Not sure if this qualifies, but “rabbit boiler” is now a term for a woman seriously whacked out over a man who is no longer interested in her.
How old are you? I was 15 when that movie came out (1995) and I was pretty familiar with that ‘valley girl’ talk well before I saw the movie, even in the midwest. I’m pretty sure it was around even as far back as Heathers in 1988 and and Saved By The Bell in 1989. Though I’ll give you that Clueless’ popularity may have made it more well known.
“Droid” from Star Wars. Prior to the movie, there were robots and androids, and the two were quite different. The movie made “droid” a synonym for “robot.”
Google NGram viewer. The earlier listings ard from things like “an-droid,” where they’re just a fragment of the word.
I don’t have a cite, but I remember reading that while valley girl speak was around back then, a lot of the slang popularized for that movie was basically made up by the writer.
Speilberg took the entire phrase Alan Hynek’s from a book on UFO encounters; it was well know among UFOlogists. The movie did popularize the phrase, though. Still “close encounter” had been used as a phrase for decades, though not in connection with aliens.
Things like ‘as if’ and ‘whatever’ were around as well as quite a few other ‘valley girl’ type words. Otherwise we wouldn’t have known the phrase ‘valley girl’ before the movie came out. But yes, I suppose they had to make up a lot of words for the movie. In fact, several years ago I asked a tangentially related question about Clueless (and a few others). The thing is, they’re going to have to come up with something on their own, if the entire movie is just full of ‘what ifs’ it’s going to get boring, fast. That kept it interesting. But now that I think about it, were any words actually made up for it? As I recall, all the main characters actually spoke quite well, I don’t remember ever wondering what something meant which was probably part of why it was so popular. There wasn’t any slang that left out a big demographic, most of the things they said could be understood within a second or two of them saying it. IOW, I don’t think they made anything up, just rearranged words and added more adjectives to give them their own combination of ditsy and smart at the same time.
Also, I’ve never watched a single episode of Buffy, but someone in the thread a linked to said that show added quite a few words to our lexicon. So there’s another one.
Ever since the movie, heads of crime organizations have been called “godfathers”. And was “perfect storm” around in popular usage before the book/movie?
I don’t remember ever hearing the phrase used before that movie. Now it pops up all the time: “We were out hiking and we had a close encounter with a bear.” That sort of thing. I think that usage is post-Spielberg.
(I get that the phrase was known to UFOlogists, but that was a small clan. I am talking about popular use in the mainstream.)
I never heard the phrase “perfect storm” prior to the book and movie.
According to Wiki, and many, many other sources, Sebastian Junger invented the phrase for the book. It might have been used occasionally beforehand but there is no doubt whatsoever it was not a common phrase prior to then; it’s become a very uverused cliche since.
“I have heard a brother of the story-telling trade at Naples preaching to a pack of good-for-nothing honest, lazy fellows by the sea-shore, work himself up into such a rage and passion with some of the villains whose wicked deeds he was describing and inventing, that the audience could not resist it; and they and the poet together would burst out into a roar of oaths and execrations against the fictitious monster of the tale, so that the hat went round, and the bajocchi tumbled into it, in the midst of a perfect storm of sympathy.”