The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #172874   Message #4195788
Posted By: meself
19-Jan-24 - 11:19 AM
Thread Name: BS: Language Pet Peeves part II
Subject: RE: BS: Language Pet Peeves part II
"Breaking News" used to be reserved for some supposedly exciting news story that was just "breaking". Then it was used for any "breaking" news story. Now "breaking news" means ... news.

A few other, um - "developments": used to be a "coup" required completion to be such, but apparently it is too much work to say "attempted coup" or "failed coup" (OTOH, I'm happy to go along with "coup" in place of "coup d'etat", so who am I to gripe?); an "elite" once was a certain group or class of people - now it's an individual member of such a group or class; a "conspiracy theory" has become "a conspiracy".... I blame all those TV political commentators are so busy trying to talk over each other that they have no time to think about what their words actually mean.