"privilege"; "exempt"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Cultural theorists have been using this word for decades as an indispensable
term of art.  MW defines it as "to accord a higher value or superior
position to."  Thus, e.g., "TV news privileges sensation over significance."

Unlike the jargon of, say, atom-splitting, no real-life consequences are
known for unheralded alterations in the jargon of Theory. Thus "privilege"
has acquired an additional sense, as here:

2010 Mary A. Favret _War at a Distance_ (Princeton: P.U.P.) 176: Military
dictionaries [of the 18th C.] assume that the average reader requires a
bridge to this new, foreign world of experience. The language of military
matters is thus privileged, but also exempted, set apart from the more
general use of English.

I don't know where or when this broader sense arose. "Privilege"
here appears to mean something like, 'to value,' which is not at all the
same as "to accord a higher value or superior position to."  (The context
provides no clue as to what subjects, if any, "military matters" might have
been privileged over.)

I apologize if the online OED covers this, but I can't get through at the
moment and don't want to think about this any longer than I have to.

BTW, MW marks this use of _exempt_ ('set apart') as _obsolete_.

JL



"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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