New Definition

In order to finish up my illustrious Master's degree, I was forcefully enrolled in the following class: English 541: "History of the English Language."  As the word 'forcefully' thus implies, I'm not exactly thrilled.  As if my lack of preemptive excitement wasn't enough, I arrived at the first class to discover ::dunt dunt duh:: that is turns out to be a split-grad/undergrad happening.  I spent to majority of the evening muttering self loathing comments to myself [OK so maybe I said a few of them outloud..] 

Despite my lack of joy, it started getting me thinking about words and their evolution; which is when on stumbled across this tweet:

BreakingNews

1. Police say suspect in 'Twilight Rapist' cases arrested in South Texas - AP http://bit.ly/gouyiE about 1 hour ago via breakingnews.com
   

 And the first thing that came to my mind was "Twilight? Like the book?"  It occurred to me that the word "twilight," although referring to sunset, has taken on a whole new meaning.  It's unlikely that when people hear this word the phenomenon of the Stephenie Meyer's "The Twilight Saga" [simply referred to as 'Twilight' in most circles, or at least my head] doesn't pop into their conscious mind.  As a fan of the series myself, I'm not sure this is such a bad thing, but it might be when it takes away from the severeness of something a bit more in-reality; like the horrible nature of rape.  The fact that my first reaction wasn't something more like "I hope he drops the soap..a lot" or "Someone should pull a Lorena Bobbitt on him" [in case you didn't get the pop culture reference, please feel free to brush up] -- may be up for interpretation.  In any case, it only furthers the idea that words evolve just like anything else; and 'Twilight' has definitely taken on a new definition.