Sunday, January 9, 2011

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:

Breaking News BreakingNews
  1. Police say suspect in 'Twilight Rapist' cases arrested in South Texas - AP http://bit.ly/gouyiE

 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.   

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