These days we're more likely to call it something like 'Cookie Crumble' (like they do in New Zealand). It's not that Golden Gaytime is a bad name, and it's far from being a bad ice cream, but their marketing slogan – "It's hard to have a Gaytime on your own" – has changed in meaning over the years.
But that's what language does, it's fluid, it shifts, it's affected by culture and society, trends, fads, fashion, and usage. The Oxford Dictionary has recently legitimized words such as twerk, derp, selfie, and fomo. We also have 'google' (the noun as well as the verb). But this is the give and take of language; usage creates validity. Words are just labels that we have assigned to things, so that when one person wants to convey meaning about a certain thing, they can use the right label so as to be clear.
And if language is a system of linguistic semiotics, a collection of labels to organise the filing cabinet of reality – then what has happened over the years is those labels have been shuffled around. Over time, and with use, the label reserved for one particular file has started being used for two files, or three.
From a specific subset, for instance 'Kleenex', to now being the label that spans the whole category of tissues. Or as in the case of Gaytimes, the word has evolved and nudged forward through association to now belong on a different file.
It's as though over time people came in increasingly asking for file x by using label y. And if enough people politely clarify that when they said 'y' they meant it more in an 'x' sort of way, eventually the process is shortcut and the relationship between label y and file x is consolidated. Whoever is in charge of the filing cabinet of reality simply picks up the y label and sticks it on file x. There you have it, etymology, the evolution of language. We're all swinging between the vines of meaning, inching our way through the shared space of Venn diagrams, simplifying, redefining, shortcutting, socialising and filing it all away.
However, this dynamic process is not without its frustrations. In recent times it has seemed as though a large number of people literally don't know what the word 'literally' means. Meant as a hyperbolic intensifier, people began telling bizarre stories of how they "literally died of excitement", "literally sat in traffic for a million years" or how "it was literally the best coffee I've ever had in my life".
And that's another one: 'ever'. Perhaps literally has done its time and now the concept of ranking things on the scale of eternity has taken over. It came in around the same time people started saying "I feel" instead of "I think". We shied away from making such a bold statement as to express what we actually think, and retreated to the unquestionable haven of our feelings. On the one hand saying nothing of consequence, "I feel…", while on the other we happily declared one thing or another to be paramount in the history of the universe. It was the funniest thing I've ever heard, the best thing I've ever tasted, the coolest person I've ever met or the most amazing thing I've ever seen. It seems as though in the morass of extreme superlatives, people are reaching for greater protestations to make the same simple point. It's the inflation of adjectives.
These misuses probably don't threaten the development of language, they are part of a fairly contained vernacular that doesn't necessarily impede on the broader use of English. They are children stretching the labels, but without any permanent change or consequence.
And whether or not 'literally' or 'ever' are permanently redefined, there is still a vital note of continuity that we must hold onto. The simple conclusion we could come to (in a somewhat ironic overstatement), is that nothing means anything anymore! In the fray of labels being stretched and swapped it's possible to lose heart and subsequently lose confidence in language. If words serve to clarify and communicate realities, surely this evolution and rearranging is a fatal weakness. What was meant to be objective has become subjective.
But this thinking has misplaced the files of meaning with the labels that categorise them. For instance, if you, in a fit of frustration, took all the labels off all the files in your filing cabinet, it would be completely false to conclude that none of those files exists anymore. So too with language, its flex and growth can make the art of hermeneutics more challenging, but it cannot nullify the realities they refer to. Take the trivial example of Golden Gaytimes; with a little thoughtfulness we can think back to how this label was previously used and access the file of meaning originally intended. Bemoaning the loss of meaning on the basis of etymology is an oversimplified tantrum that throws truth out with the bathwater.
This relativising of language and truth is one of the more thoughtless objections to the trustworthiness of the bible. Not only is this argument simply false, it is self-defeating. The original meaning of the biblical texts may not be instantly accessible in their totality, but they are far from lost. Jesus repeatedly says "I tell you the truth", and with some intelligent consideration we can read that truth with clarity and certainty. Even across the divide of language translation and development, the reality and verity of those words can never be lost. The concepts, events, quotes, and truths are the unwavering files kept safely in the filing cabinet. The shift and change in words may be interesting to note, but it literally does nothing to destroy or discard the files they originally represented.
Sam Manchester is currently a theology student with an inescapable sociology degree behind him. In an attempt to reconcile the two, he reflects and writes about their coalescence in everyday life.
Sam's archive of articles may be viewed at
www.pressserviceinternational.org/sam-manchester.html