In a discussion about how the word “nigger” means different things in different contexts — from being the most hateful thing ever to being a loving endearment — essayist Randall Kennedy quotes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:
’a word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged.’ A word is instead ‘the skin of a living thought [that]* may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.’
*Kennedy’s brackets
I love Holmes’ definition. A word often does not mean just one thing; and that’s more likely the more it’s used.
Kennedy cites Towne v. Eisner, 245 U.S. 418, 425 (1918) for where he found the Holmes.
source: Nigger: the strange career of a troublesome word
by Randall Kennedy
2002. Pantheon Books / Random House, New York
1 comment:
It's one of the difficulties in communicating on FB. So many simple, easily understood, seemingly inoffensive words mean so many different things.
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