"trouble" = to complicate; problematize.

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
> At 10/26/2009 10:03 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>At 9:43 AM -0400 10/26/09, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>>Jon, did you come to praise this locution, or to bury it?  What came
>>>to my mind was "troubled waters", roiled.  And the OED has "trouble,
>>>v" sense 3:  "To put into a state of (mental) agitation or disquiet;
>>>to disturb, distress, grieve, perplex."  That seems quite plausible
>>>for your quotation.
>>
>>I don't see how it does.  That quite standard sense requires an
>>object that's the experiencer of the trouble, hence a sentient being.
>>The "problematize" sense doesn't.  It's not the politics of
>>historical interpretation that is troubled/distressed/plagued here,
>>but those who are trying to figure it out.
>
> I see "the politics and ethics of historical interpretation" as being
> roiled,agitated, stirred up. in the same way that troubled waters are
> roiled.  The subject (the politics) stands for the people who interpret.

I've heard at least one anthropologist use "worry" in a similar way.
Perhaps people are just tired of using "problematize."


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org