Quote Originally Posted by Herbert Augustus Chapman View Post
The problem with lexical semantics b is that the mob rules and it is very frustrating when a particular word you are fond becomes a popular misnomer and, with language being an organic entity, that word then changes its meaning.

I detest how everyone uses sanguine to mean confident in a cool and calm manner simply because its meaning has become conflated with sang-froid. Sanguine, as you will know, is loud and enthusiastic optimism to the point of stupidity.
Dear old Willie Butler Yeats has a poem about this sort of thing, h:

‘I made my song a coat,
Covered with embroideries,
Out of old mythologies.
From heel to throat.
But the fools caught it.
Wore it in the world’s eyes as though they’d wrought it.
Fools, let them take it.
For there’s more enterprise in walking naked.’

Apologies if I’ve misquoted.