"shocking"

[Victor Steinbok]

Lest we get carried away too far, consider this 1993 appearance @8:25
http://goo.gl/bLFGv (@1:29:57 if screened from the beginning).

     VS-)

On 7/13/2011 8:00 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> This goes back to a post of mine on Feb. 11. 2010, which averred that
> "shocking," once a pretty intense word, now often means no more than
> "startling" or "surprising."
>
> That may be putting it mildly. An ad that just appeared on the Yahoo home
> page indicates that, to some people, "shocking" can mean "surprising (in a
> pleasant way)."
>
> Now that I refer back to the ad in order to cite it, it's gone. However, it
> did claim that dermatologists have found a "shocking" new treatment for
> aging skin. That means it's some kind of miracle and you should buy it.
>
> Or perhaps "shocking" really means "miraculous" here.  In my day, similar
> ads sometimes contented themselves with "surprising" but wouldn't shy from
> "miraculous."  "Miraculous," however, unlike "shocking," has decidedly
> positive connotations.
>
> The shift from negative to positive makes me nervous. (And don't say "bad" =
> "good" is a common example: we're talking formal discourse here, and that
> kind of "bad " doesn't even mean "good" in the relevant sense of "good.")
>
>
> Even so, I now frequently hear TV journalists use "shocking" in a neutral
> sense.  There are many more traditional exx. too, but that makes no
> difference.
>
> JL

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