Words you can't use any more

[CoalTit]

I know language evolves and all that. I accepted that "nonplussed" is now an unusable word because so many people take it to mean its opposite. I didn't really have much occasion to use it anyway. But now it turns out that "lame" and "literally' have suffered the same fate.

I've hurt my foot. I tried to explain to a friend on WhatsApp that I won't be going dancing this week, by writing: "I'm literally, technically lame". I got a long voice message in return expressing sympathy for my lack of confidence, saying how intimidating the dance scene can be.
So I tried, "No, lame, like a horse" and that seemed to work.
Then I messaged my upstairs neighbour to say I can't help her with her work in the light well today because I'm lame. I hurt my foot helping her so I thought she'd understand.
She replied asking me to get up the ladder so she can pass things down to me. I tried " I can't help you today; I can barely walk", and she seemed to understand.

I thought I could use "lame" to save myself typing out "I hurt my foot; it's badly swollen and I can barely walk". I thought I could use "literally" to make it clear, but no.

Let's face it, you're right.

A child might know both meanings but have no idea she’d be in trouble for using these words as if you haven’t encountered homophobic usage you might not know that they could in any way be pejoratives.

I could believe it. She may have read “gay” and “queer” in charity shop copies of the Famous Five (I bet they’ve been edited out in reprints by now). Would she know about homosexuality? I know children are taught this stuff at an absurdly young age now, but still…

I heard an older person say recently “we had an extraordinary meeting”. I knew what she meant, but I bet some younger people would then have thought “wait… what?!”

She meant that the meeting was “extraordinary” as in unplanned, and unscheduled, but otherwise very mundane.

As a child, I liked to study dictionaries, so I knew a lot of the more obscure meanings of words.

I’d expect youngsters now to know about homosexuality but as an entirely neutral facet of the range of human behaviour. A 10 yo might well not know about homophobia and that there could be anything negative about either meaning of ‘gay’.

Does anyone here go to the railway station anymore, or do we all go to the train station?

I think we use both. Though more often we’d just say ‘station’.

A 10 year old should of course be aware that families come in different ways, and dd knew this. But why should a 10 year old be fully aware of the details of hatred and prejudice? Isn't it better that those meanings did not even occur to her? When her youngest sibling was 10 the school they attended had a parents' meeting to discuss the issue of boys - and it was always boys - using those words pejoratively. That's much worse than a child innocently using 'gay' to mean bright, pretty or colourful. And do you really think those boys had a better understanding of those words? Far more likely IMO that they had just picked up that it was 'unkind' to use them - and therefore they used them.

@B0D , the station.