[Ads-l] Semantic shift? Or is it me?

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Mon Jul 18 09:15:48 UTC 2022


Real Gone Guy: Nellie Lutcher in 1947
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=102mle2i1z0
Saw her live, back then, at The Lou's Kiel Auditorium.


On Sat, Jul 16, 2022 at 9:49 PM Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> "... the CIA’s most _secretive_ and powerful hacking tools."
>
> Shouldn't that be, "most _secret_"? I tend to think of _secretive_ as
> essentially meaning "sneaky," whereas _secret_ means "unknown." Like, the
> point isn't that everybody knows about these tools that the CIA has and
> uses in sneaky ways, but that nobody even knew that the tools existed, till
> an operative narced on the CIA to WikiLeaks.
>
> This use of "secretive" as a cooler and a goner replacement for "secret"
> has been popping up in the last two or three years, at least.
>
> --
> - Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
>

-- 
- Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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


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