Some changes in English make useful words less precise – Joe Bennett
I know, I know. The language changes. It always has and it always will. To bemoan the state of the language is merely to bemoan the passage of time.
The clock ticks, we age, language changes, it’s all irreversible. To get upset is futile.
And yet, and yet, what is one to do when changes in the language are such obvious steps backwards? Are we supposed to stand by and let them happen without protest? Take the word alibi.
Alibi is Latin for elsewhere. It came into English via the law. If you are accused of stealing Mrs Jenkins’ prize chicken on the evening of February 15, but you can prove that on that particular evening you were playing the trombone for East Lyttelton in the World Brass Band Championships being held in Kuala Lumpur, several thousand kilometres from Mrs Jenkins’ fowl house, then you have an alibi (and a cast iron one at that).
You were elsewhere and you can prove it. And that is the precise and useful meaning of the word in English.
But not any more. Increasingly I am reading and hearing sentences such as, ‘when Peter was late for work again, his alibi was that he had to take his dog to the vet.’
Using alibi in this sense broadens the meaning without gain, because there is already a perfectly good word available. That word is excuse. But it’s probably too late to save the precise and useful meaning of alibi. The linguistic toothpaste is out of the tube.
With alibi, you can, at least, understand how the misuse came about. I am at a loss to explain ‘I could care less.’ It derives, apparently, from the United States, but that is still no explanation. Americans may have elected Donald Trump twice, but there is no evidence I am aware of that they are more stupid than any other nationality.
‘I couldn’t care less,’ is a common expression of indifference. If you say you couldn’t care less that the All Blacks hooker is unavailable for the next match, you convey your high-minded lack of interest in rugby. It would be impossible for you to be less emotionally engaged with it.
But if, as is increasingly common not only in the States but on these shores, you say, ‘I could care less,’ you are announcing that you do indeed care about rugby, that you are troubled – though to an undefined extent - by the hooker’s absence. You’re saying the opposite of what you mean.
So, are we going to drive this absurdity out? Or are we going to yawn and let it proliferate among the weak of mind until it has become the norm, to such an extent that one day in the future, when you happen to use the original meaningful phrase, people will gawp in bewilderment at your old-fogeyness? Are we? Probably.
Because we seem to have done so with puddings and proof. Only this week in a reputable newspaper I read that the proof was in the pudding. No it wasn’t and it never has been. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
The confusion stems from the word proof. Here it means test, a meaning that lingers in a range of expressions.
To proofread something is to test it for accuracy, before committing it to print. The exception that proves the rule is the one that tests the rule.
When bakers prove their yeast they are testing it, to confirm that it is active. And liquor that is 40% proof has been tested for alcohol content. (Time was when that test was done with gunpowder. If, after being soaked in the liquor, the gunpowder could still be ignited, then that liquor was of a particular proof.)
The only proper test of a pudding is not to look at it, or to weigh it in the hand, or to study its list of ingredients. It’s to eat it. In other words, the only way to judge anything is to put it to the use for which it was intended.
And am I now supposed to watch this wise and practical proverb become reduced to a meaningless echo of its former self, without raising a voice in protest? Count me out. I shall go down fighting. The noblest cause is one that’s already lost.
Charge once more, then, and be dumb!
Let the victors, when they come,
When the forts of folly fall,
Find thy body by the wall.