A commenter writes:
The word “disrespected”, when used as, “the ho [disrespected] me”, shows [a] new use of a word, now fairly accepted, regardless of how clumsy.
I often see people talk about something being a new use of the word — whether they’re condemning the supposed new use or accepting it — but much of the time that just turns out not to be so. I realize that most people don’t have the luxury of free access to the Oxford English Dictionary, but Google Books is often a good second best. Here’s a sample of what the OED reports:
trans. The reverse of to respect; to have or show no respect, regard, or reverence for; to treat with irreverence.1614 WITHER Sat. to King, Juvenilia (1633) 346 Here can I smile to see..how the mean mans suit is dis-respected… 1706 HEARNE Collect. 26 Apr., He was disrespected in Oxford by several men who now speak well of him…. 1885 G. MEREDITH Diana I. 257 You will judge whether he disrespects me….
1791 PAINE Rights of Man (ed. 2) I. 101 Reflecting how wretched was the condition of a disrespected man….
Now it might well be that “disrespected,” whether as the past tense of a verb “disrespect,” or as the closely related adjective referring to someone who is disrespected, is more commonly used than before. But it’s certainly not new. And, more broadly, lots of assertions that some usage is new prove, on closer examination, to be unsound.
wm13 says:
There seems to have been a subtle shift in primary meaning here. The OED text and examples indicate that the verb “disrespect” meant primarily “to have no respect for,” that is, it described a mental state of the grammatical subject, whereas in current parlance the verb means “to affirmatively manifest contempt for,” that is, it describes an action by the subject.
So I could disrespect a blogger in the older sense by considering his blog not worth reading and never visiting it, but in the newer sense I would disrespect him by going to his comments and saying something contemptuous.
November 19, 2009, 12:17 pmJohn Armstrong says:
What about “props”, which shortens “propers”, which shortens “proper respect”, as in Aretha Franklin’s song
How new is that?
November 19, 2009, 12:45 pmbyomtov says:
wm13 beat me to it. I think he is correct.
November 19, 2009, 1:14 pmba2 says:
disrespect used in the same sentence as “ho” has definite gang connotations that are missing from all the other examples. you dis’ a gang member or someone from that culture and you can expect retribution so that person can maintain his street cred. That’s the difference.
November 19, 2009, 1:53 pmMark N. says:
That seems to be the case of most of the quotations, but the 1706 OED quote, “He was disrespected in Oxford by several men…” seems to indicate an event in which several men in Oxford affirmatively manifested contempt for him.
November 19, 2009, 1:57 pmMartha says:
re: propers–According to OED, it has a noun sense since at least the 1300s, but the AF sense dates from the 1970s:
4. slang (orig. and chiefly in African-American usage). In pl. Chiefly with possessive pronoun. Due respect, acknowledgement, or esteem; = PROPS n.
1971 Chicago Daily Defender 7 Jan. 14/3 A level of existence which affords each black man his propers{em}dignity, pride,..and the ability to govern his destiny. 1981 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 4 Dec. B15/1 The least they could have done was give me my propers. 1993 Essence (Electronic ed.) July 50 Now she’s finally starting to get her propers. 2002 Echoes May 55/1 His approach to both his instrument and composition is anything but predictable and for that alone he deserves a bag full of propers.
November 19, 2009, 2:10 pmYankev says:
Ain’t that enlightening?
November 19, 2009, 2:28 pmMichael Jennings says:
I often see people talk about something being a new use of the word — whether they’re condemning the supposed new use or accepting it
I recall a comment on Usenet about a decade ago (for which searching in Google Groups would be too much work) in which someone took issue with the fact that the characters of the movie Rob Roy (set in the early 18th century) swore using the word “fuck”, when “obviously” this was a relatively recently coined word, and would it perhaps be possible to find out what the actual swear words of the time were, and whether it would be possible to use them in period movies.
I think the assumption here was that because “fuck” is not often used in written English from the past, that the word was not in use. Or perhaps the thought was that because swear words tend to be mostly in spoken or colloquial English, then they are more ephemeral and changing than other words. However, this is entirely false. The word has been in common use for at least 500 years and almost certainly much longer. And certain other things remain the same, too. Pistol utters the word “firk” in Shakespeare’s Henry V, which is a bit like the characters in Battlestar Galactica saying “frak”
November 19, 2009, 4:33 pmDuffy Pratt says:
If the Aretha Franklin sense of the word dates from the 1970s, what on earth did it mean when she recorded the song in 1967.
Also, isn’t it possible that the use of the word is new, even if it had a similar use a long time ago which subsequently dies away. This kind of reminds me of the guy who wrote to Miss Manners asking to resolve a dispute he was having with his wife over whether it was proper for their five year old to eat broccoli with his fingers. Miss Manners said that, indeed, eating broccoli with his fingers was perfectly acceptable, but she wondered where a five year old had gotten such a sense of refinement.
November 19, 2009, 4:49 pmSoul Man says:
Somewhere, Otis Redding is wondering when he will get his propers.
November 19, 2009, 6:59 pmmariner says:
I’ve recently discovered Elizabethan literature, and I’ve been surprised to see that expressions I believed to be less than 100 years old are actually more than 400 years old.
wm13:
I believe the current usage means “fail to show respect for”, which is not the same. For example, walking past someone without acknowledging him is sometimes called disrespect.
Of course, manifestly showing contempt is definitely failing to show respect, yes?
November 19, 2009, 7:24 pmMartha says:
It means I wasn’t careful with my wording. I should have said that the first illustrative quote dated from the 70s. I guess the OED doesn’t mine song lyrics for its exemplars. Often, a word is in spoken use for some time before it appears in print.
Yes, it is possible that a given usage dies out and then returns. In this case, the Franklin meaning is listed in the OED as a new sense of the noun, and not as a resurgence of an older, formerly obs or rare meaning, and I’m happy to take their word for it.
November 19, 2009, 8:20 pmneurodoc says:
You think there is a meaningful difference between “fail to show respect for” and “affirmatively manifest contempt for”? If so, perhaps we need to reconsider our definitions of “love” to make sure they encompass all the multitudinous ways in which Elizabeth Barrett Browning professed to love.
I think “disrespect” these days may be seen as a largely “eye of the beholder” thing, with its real meaning established most unequivocally by the most violent and/or insecure among us expressing themselves demonstratively.
November 20, 2009, 2:11 amGlenn Bowen says:
My intended point. New, commonly, whatever.
-superflous to my original post, the point taken.
To alter, perhaps clarify, my original statement, “disrespected” is now more prevalent in use as “I was disrespected”; “they disrespected me”; in the form “dissed”; etc., than it has been. I was not really aware of it’s usage in the manner cited until the popularity of the Hip Hop culture.
My original post refers to the term used clumsily. It seems smoother, more grammatically streamlined usages are, “I was treated with a lack of respect”, or, “disrespectfully”; “they were disrespectful of/to me”.
November 20, 2009, 10:02 ammariner says:
neurodoc:
Do you believe there is a meaningful difference between acting and not acting; between doing something and doing nothing?
November 20, 2009, 12:28 pmbud says:
I don’t care about its provenance. The word “disrespect” insults my ears.
November 20, 2009, 4:53 pmCecil Moon says:
“I often see people talk…..”
A bit off topic but a subject which which bothers me. Through difficult self-training I have attempted to wean my writing of dissociation of the verb and its object. I would prefer “hear” to “see” or perhaps even “observe” or perhaps “notice as.”
I know; picky, picky, picky!
November 20, 2009, 9:57 pmdevil's advocate says:
Wm13 was on the shift from the beginning
albeit I don’t think the older meaning has been lost, so I see this as enlarging more than shifting the usage.
And I don’t really think it is so subtle. None of the quotes Eugene presents really offer the single event sense, they all go to the state of mind. Now you could suggest that the state of mind presumption is implicit in the new usage.
Who is going to diss somebody that they don’t hold in some disregard of which the dissing is simply the manifestation.
likewise, the observation of the state of mind probably implies disrespectful acts in fulfillment of, or evidence of, this prejudice.
As such these are the closest to this new modern idiom:
but I still think they speak to a state of mind which may be deduced from some actions, maybe even from a single incident, but they still refer to the state of mind rather than to a specific disrespectful act.
I don’t think Eugene, the OED or Goggle books have it over on us this time.
Brian
PS, it is not remotely possible to correct all my typos, syntax errors, omissions and other oversights in 5 minutes, not least of which because I create new ones while fixing the old ones under that kind of time limit. how bout 15, is that adjustable, or how about no time limit and just save the original post if people want to argue that you changed it disingenuously. that is really dissin’, but I digress.
November 21, 2009, 5:51 am