Splendours and miseries of the Queen’s English in the 21st century
The wonderful thing about language, and especially English, with its enormous vocabulary, is the existence of groups of words with broadly similar meanings but each of which conveys something slightly different. Such subtle distinctions add to the richness of meaning, in speech and writing, and to the pleasure of using words. And the sense changes over time, as historic events add moral overtones or undertones to particular words.
Take, for instance, the group of words meaning ‘friend’, of which there are about 30 or 40. None is exactly interchangeable. Many have undergone osmosis even in our own lifetime. Some are mysterious in origin and malleability. Crony, for instance. The word became pejorative in the 19th century, first in America (I think) in the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829–37), which also gave rise to the related ‘spoils system’.
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