semantic shift: "shrapnel"

[David A. Daniel]

I have always thought the rifle/gun distinction was one of those dumb
military things. Like, you can call your canon (which are rifled) guns but
you can't call your rifle a gun, as in: "This is my rifle, this is my gun;
This is for fighting, this is for fun," said while holding rifle in one hand
and exposed member in the other, after having gotten it wrong, whereas folks
in the non-military world were perfectly free to call their rifles guns. No?

DAD

____________________________________________
I only got one rule: Never bet money that you don't have on a dog race with
your ex-girlfriend who happens to be a stripper.


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 11:00 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: semantic shift: "shrapnel"



>>Next up: calling your rifle a "gun."

A notorious no-no. But ask the average, non-firearm-savvy speaker what
his/her usage is.  Ya can't stop them, I tells ya!

JL

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 7:28 PM, Dave Wilton <dave at wilton.net> wrote:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
>
> Not quite. A shrapnel shell, or "spherical case shot," was a hollow shell
> filled with round balls that were dispersed when a burster charge blew the
> shell apart. Shrapnel shells became obsolete during WWI when they were
> replaced with the modern high-explosive fragmentation shell. With the new
> weapon, the casing fragmented and the shards caused the casualties. The
> high-explosive shells were easier and cheaper to manufacture, more
> reliable,
> and carried a larger explosive charge, so they were more effective. By
1940
> and WWII, the original shrapnel shells were long gone.
>
> What we have here is a term for an obsolete technology being given new
life
> by being applied to the replacement technology. We still "dial" a phone
> number and "cc" emails; the same thing happened with anti-personnel
> weapons.
>
> So if you really want to get pedantic and technical, shrapnel hasn't
> existed
> anywhere, other than museums, for nearly a century.
>
> Next up: calling your rifle a "gun."
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of
> Robin Hamilton
> Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 3:46 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: semantic shift: "shrapnel"
>
> > Most changes in language come from sloppy usage, yes? Or is that too
> > prescriptive a point of view? The word they want in those reports is
> > "shards". Shrapnel comes from weaponry. Or at least it did... up until
> > now...
>
>         [SNIP]
>
> > DAD
>
> Actually, it's worse than that -- the rot set in in 1940.  The correct
> meaning of "shrapnel", as the OED points out, is: "1. A hollow projectile
> [sic]containing bullets and a small bursting charge, which, when fired by
> the time fuse, bursts the shell and scatters the bullets in a shower."
>
> This perfectly correct usage persisted from 1806 until 1940, when the term
> was quite illicitly extended from the shell itself to the fragments
> contained in it or projected from it.
>
> The subsequent shift to refer to scattered showers of destructive shards
> produced by any explosion simply further extends this corruption of the
> original usage.
>
> Myself, I blame the Great Patriotic War -- language has been going
downhill
> ever since then.
>
> Robin
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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