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Originally Posted by MeleaB
When did so many people start to misuse the word "fake"? My guess is shortly after Trump moved into office.
Interesting. Yeah, it seems "fake" has transformed into a synonym for "overrated" or even more simply "something I don't agree with."
Could be the never-ending evolution of language. "Notoriety" used to be negative in connotation, as in ill repute, but now you'll hear about someone looking to "gain notoriety for our business." You know, like Exxon and Theranos. "Fantastic" used to be closer in meaning to "imaginary" but of course, now it's just a generally positive adjective. People frequently use "comprise" in places where they should say "compose," such as "the U.S. Supreme Court is comprised of nine justices." I think we're less than a decade away from that being considered correct.
Obviously, the last year or so has seen a rise in the usage of the phrase "return to normalcy," lest we forget that it was once seen as a malapropism – almost the "covfefe" of 1920.
Perhaps most famous shift – and most cringing to many of us – is that "literal" and "figurative" became synonyms in several major dictionaries. I'm frequently tempted to blame YouTube vloggers and VSCO girls for making it a thing, it's worth noting that such usage
goes back centuries.
Even the post above about how much (or how little) gold is in an Olympic gold medal uses the word "fake" to describe the awards. Are they called gold because they're made of gold? Or are they called gold simply because that's their color? Couldn't it be both?
Yes, once upon a time they were pure gold, but that was more than a century ago. Save for melt value, no Olympic champion would want them to be pure gold. Pure gold is soft, so much so that if you had a coin the size of a U.S. quarter, you'd be able to bend it in half pretty easily with your bare hands. Try doing that with an actual quarter.
Having "only" gold-plated first-place awards has been a thing for as long as all of us have been around, but for some reason, media outlets decided to make it sound like some major scam this year. I keep waiting for one of them to revolt because a nickel isn't made of nickel, a 2x4 isn't actually two inches thick nor four inches wide, and most tinfoil hats are made of aluminum.
Somewhere, Prince will start stirring in his grave because the Guardian will soon declare that one of his biggest hits was a lie: the so-called "little red Corvette" was mostly gray and silver once you got below the surface.
