Editing Blog/2026-03-07/Semantic Drift

Many years ago, semantic drift caught an author unfortunately unawares. After she put in a lot of work to write a book describing how homosexuals received capital punishment for centuries, it was found not days after her book was published that a sentence of 'death recorded' does not actually mean that the person was killed.

{{Quote
|text=It empowered the trial judge to abstain from formally pronouncing a sentence of death upon a capital convict in cases where the judge intended to recommend the offender for a pardon from the death sentence. In the vast majority (almost certainly all) of the cases marked ‘death recorded’, the offender would not have been executed.
|source=Richard Ward, quoted in The Guardian<ref name=gdr/>
}}

This particular example is exacerbated by the British tendency to use overly confusing terms of art in their bureaucracy<ref name=ilr/>. I suspect this is intentionally done to obscure the purpose of that term, and to provide a shield of jargon around the bureaucracy, but regardless it does render [[Time-Translation Symmetry in Fields of Study|history of the era complicated without context]].

This came to mind recently because I read a funny quote about Terence Tao:

{{Quote
|text='At least', I thought, 'the parents and the teachers involved were courageous enough to attempt something designed at meeting Terence's special needs.'
|source=M.A. Clements<ref name=tt/>
}}

In the vein of the urban myth that Einstein was notoriously bad at Mathematics, perhaps one day we will be informed that one of the best mathematicians of our generation was a [[wikipedia:Special needs|special needs individual]] as the phrase has come to be used today.

== Notes ==

<references>
<ref name=gdr>
{{cite news
 |last=Lea
 |first=Richard
 |title=Naomi Wolf admits blunder over Victorians and sodomy executions
 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/24/naomi-wolf-admits-blunder-over-victorians-and-sodomy-executions
 |work=The Guardian
 |date=24 May 2019
 |access-date=7 March 2026
}}
</ref>
<ref name=ilr>
The American term for a non-citizen who is permitted to live there is Lawful Permanent Resident. The desire of North Americans for quick easy words transmutes this to "having a [[wikipedia:Green card|Green Card]]". [[Green Card Application|I have one]]. By contrast, the British chose the entirely accurately-phrased-yet-confusing [[wikipedia:Indefinite leave to remain|Indefinite Leave to Remain]]. Choosing to use the word 'Leave' in there is mark of true British genius.
</ref>
<ref name=tt>
{{cite journal
 |last=Clements
 |first=M. A. (Ken)
 |title=Terence Tao
 |journal=Educational Studies in Mathematics
 |volume=15
 |issue=3
 |pages=213–238
 |date=August 1984
 |doi=10.1007/BF00312075
 |url=https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00312075
 |archive-url=https://gwern.net/doc/iq/high/smpy/1984-clements.pdf
 |archive-date=2 Feb 2026
 |access-date=7 March 2026
}}
</ref>
</references>


{{#seo:|description=The blog post explores the concept of semantic drift, where a term's meaning changes over time, using examples like the misunderstanding of death recorded}}

[[Category:Blog]]