[pure-silver] Re: Organic?

> 
> Words mean things. Polluting their meaning just debases our
> culture,
> art, literature, politics, and society by making our
> thinking muddy.
> 
> Thank you for reading this organically - assuming
> you're still
> alive you silly carbon-based life forms ...
> 
> </rant>


Tim there is just one trouble with that logic.  The meaning of words often 
change as our speech, like everything else is constantly evolving.  They often 
vary from area to area.  It's particularly common in the US.  In Europe, they 
just often evolved different languages.  It really isn't surprising in that 
many of the areas with general dialects are often larger than many European 
nations.

Example in the South US the term Coke is often used in the generic sense for 
any what Northerners would call soda or pop.  Coke could mean a coke, but it 
could also mean any such soft drink.  NO ONE other than a transplant would ever 
use the term pop other than maybe in the context of "I'll pop you upside the 
head with this coke bottle if you don't leave me alone."    I think I'll have a 
bottle of pop, in Chicago would be a perfectly normal sentence.  The late Lewis 
Grizzard would testify that in Atlanta that would never happen.

I'm old.  I know how the meaning of words can change.  I am old enough to 
remember back when gay meant happy, but it takes a entirely different context 
today.  I could use it very carefully with the old meaning, but there is a big 
risk that the new one would be taken.  In that day bad meant bad, not good.  
Ask for a cigarette using the European term in the US and big trouble might be 
around the corner, even with no ill will or intent.

It is one of the problems with language, especially the written word.  Context 
is often difficult if not impossible to determine.  Yet we should be as careful 
as possible to portray the meaning.  

Now is a print organic or not.  Well these are often the people that would 
drive with their knees an inch from their chins in a Yugo that gets 900mph at 
900 feet per hour.  What would I do?  First I'd make a print on fiber based 
paper and tell them everything used in making the print was "All Natural" in 
that everything used to make it came from nature.  We may have doctored it a 
bit.  grin.


      
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