[Ads-l] Neglected Popular Sense of "Schizophrenia" and "Schizophrenic"

Chris Waigl chris at LASCRIBE.NET
Wed Sep 14 02:52:46 UTC 2022


On Tue, Sep 13, 2022 at 6:34 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

> Both OED and Merriam-Webster seem to completely neglect an extremely
> widespread popular sense of the words "schizophrenia" and "schizophrenic."
> This sense is the meaning "split personality."  Although that meaning is
> scientifically incorrect, I believe that, at least in the U.S., it is the
> predominant popular definition.
>

I'm not sure what you mean by this, outside some rather dated fictional
stories along the lines of Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde or Hitchcock's Psycho. In
common contemporary parlance I think the predominant popular definition is
more along the lines of "jarringly paradoxical" or "internally
contradictory". (I base this purely on anecdote-level personal observation,
not scientific research - disclaimer.)

Chris

-- 
Chris Waigl . chris.waigl at gmail.com . chris at lascribe.net
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net . http://chryss.eu

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