# What Other Words Have Lost Their Original Meanings? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 11, 2002, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414 "2002-06-11T08:14:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/181 "2026-06-24T18:37:31Z")
That usage might become widespread, at which point the word would take on another meaning. But it hasn’t happened yet. When it’s just a few people using a word in a particular way, and they aren’t part of a community that’s using the word to each other, the word doesn’t have a new meaning; that usage is just wrong. > [@Lumpy](#): > > A sort of circular definition: A curator is a person in charge of well cared for things, and therefore what a curator selects or is in charge of is a well cared for thing. No, the well-cared-for just isn’t part of the meaning at all. A head librarian who uses circulation data to decide what books to cycle out of the collection and what to get more copies of, and watches the bestseller lists and patron requests to add new books, is curating the collection, even if they don’t do anything about that pipe leak that keeps on causing water damage to all of the books below it. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/182 "2026-06-24T18:44:09Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > Bespoke _still_ means made for one person. It’s more likely that ad is just using it wrong. Yes, it’s the fact that they’re using it the wrong way is what irks me. I know that “bespoke” still retains its original definition in certain contexts. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/183 "2026-06-24T18:53:01Z")
And if you really want to nitpick, it was originally “bespoken.” The shortening–which little babies love–came later. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/184 "2026-06-24T19:45:27Z")
> [@robby](#): > > First off, Shakespeare’s works survive, whereas the works and writings of many lesser-known authors and playwrights have not. So there is survivorship bias. Right. But still, even if The Bard wasnt the first to write a word, it certainly wasnt all that popular before him. > [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](#): > > Well, sorry, but just ain’t the way language works. While not common, I found a few press accounts where in the past couple of years it was to used to mean something to the effect of ‘special’ or ‘high quality.’ Right. It does happen that words are misused- and sometimes that new “meaning” makes its way into common usage. But not always, and apparently not in this case. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/185 "2026-06-24T21:22:43Z")
There’s a question on quora from five years ago asking about it, so it’s here, like it or not! ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/186 "2026-06-24T22:10:06Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I had no idea that “sibling” was so recent, though. It’s such a useful concept that one would think it demands a word. “Sibling” has become a common word in the course of my lifetime (I remember learning that German had a word for “brother or sister” and had to think a moment to think of the English equivalent, because it was a fairly obscure word at the time). [Google Ngram](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sibling&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3) show a steady growth in popularity starting at 1920, and looking at a 1960 dictionary (Webster’s New World Dictionary College edition), I see that “sibling” isn’t even in there (though “sib” is). ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Finn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Mark\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Finn)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2026, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/187 "2026-06-25T21:55:42Z")
Curiously - “sibling” has no one-word equivalent in French. How about other languages? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2026, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/188 "2026-06-25T22:50:57Z")
As I mentioned- German has one: Geschwister, blbut that’s only a plural (siblings). ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2026, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/189 "2026-06-25T23:18:10Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > As I mentioned- German has one: Geschwister, but that’s only a plural (siblings). Interestingly, that is cognate to English _sister_. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2026, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/190 "2026-06-26T00:37:45Z")
And so is the German word for sister (Schwester) ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2026, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/191 "2026-06-26T03:58:58Z")
> [@Mark\_Finn](#): > > Curiously - “sibling” has no one-word equivalent in French. How about other languages? In Japanese, the word generally used is 兄弟, kyodai which literally means “brothers” but is used as “siblings.” If you want want to specify how many brothers a person had you need to say “male brothers”, but you can use brothers to say “They are brothers.” There is a word for sisters, 姉妹 shimai, but you never ask how many brothers and sisters do you have. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2026, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414/192 "2026-06-26T13:56:18Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > In Japanese, the word generally used is 兄弟, kyodai which literally means “brothers” but is used as “siblings.” Hebrew does the same thing with the masculine plural form _achim_. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-other-words-have-lost-their-original-meanings/113414.md?page=9)