The word "pornographic"

[Laurence Horn]

Beverly writes,

>And in fact "obscene" was extended in much the same way in the '60s, as I
>recall.
>
I was going to say something similar, but when I checked the OED entry, I
became convinced that "obscene" has ALWAYS (or at least since Shakespeare)
had both the broader meaning ('Offensive to the senses, or to taste or
refinement; disgusting, repulsive, filthy, foul, abominable, loathsome',
from the original Latin meaning of 'inauspicious, adverse') alongside the
narrower one ('Offensive to modesty or decency; expressing or suggesting
unchaste or lustful ideas; impure, indecent, lewd').  'Pornographic' is
literally 'writing about prostitutes/prostitution', so here we really do
have a case of broadening.

larry

>At 01:40 PM 1/21/00 -0500, you wrote:
>>On Fri, 21 Jan 2000, James Smith wrote:
>>
>> > Is it just me?...or does the following use of
>> > "pornographic" bother anyone else in this group?
>> >
>> >    Has the word "pornographic" lost its reference to
>> > the erotic and sexual (whether erotic and sexual
>> > material is good or bad is not the point of my
>> > enquiry) and become another word for disturbing,
>> > obscene, disgusting, horrific, etc.   Maybe this is a
>>
>>I have heard and read "pornographic" commonly used in this way for
>>decades.  The OED documents "pornography" in a transferred or extended
>>sense back to 1968.  Other words such as "sexy" have undergone similar
>>sense-development.
>>
>>
>>Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
>>Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
>>   and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
>>Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
>>e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2