Let’s suppose there’s a word with a specific meaning, that you would use in a specific context, under a specific set of circumstances.<\/p>\n
Let’s suppose you see that word used in a related, though not identical, set of circumstances.<\/p>\n
The word is “reign.”<\/p>\n
Now, I would use the word “reign” in the context of monarchy. “King Henry reigned over England in the 16th century.” “The reign of King Henry was marred by religious quarrels.”<\/p>\n
I wouldn’t use “reign” in connection with a President of the United States, however.<\/p>\n
Yet, twice this week, in different contexts, that’s exactly what I saw.<\/p>\n
The first came over the weekend. For a variety of reasons, which I hope to blog about soon-ish, I read a Glenn Beck book, and he used the term “reign” to describe George Washington’s presidency. Don’t ask me the page and number of the cite, because I doubt I could find it again. Washington didn’t “reign” over the United States. Washington governed<\/i> the United States, Washington presided<\/i> over the new nation. The word “reign” just doesn’t fit any conception I would have of the presidency. And given my reading of Beck as an anarcho-libertarian, I can’t imagine why he<\/i> would use the word “reign” in the context of the American system of governance. But, perhaps, using the word “reign” to describe a presidency is current in right-wing circles. \ud83d\ude15<\/p>\n
Today, I saw the word “reign” used again. In this case, it described George W. Bush’s presidency. I think the exact phrase was “During President George W. Bush’s reign…” As it was for something I was working on at work, I changed the phrasing — “reign” became “term,” or maybe I changed it to “During George W. Bush’s presidency…” I don’t remember exactly<\/i> how I ultimately wrote out the passage from the suggested text, because I wrote a lot<\/i> today and my brain feels mildly mushy. What I do<\/i> remember is that this particular paragraph needed a lot<\/i> of work. And no, I didn’t let my feelings for Bush infect the writing. \ud83d\ude0e<\/p>\n
This use of the word “reign” — now that I’ve seen it twice<\/i> this week — has me a bit baffled and befuddled. I look at it, and it looks wrong<\/i>. It feels<\/i> wrong. It’s the wrong word<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Isn’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let’s suppose there’s a word with a specific meaning, that you would use in a specific context, under a specific set of circumstances. Let’s suppose you see that word used in a related, though not identical, set of circumstances. The word is “reign.” Now, I would use the word “reign” in the context of monarchy.Continue reading “On Linguistic Befuddlement”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[707,4102],"class_list":["post-2493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-linguistics","tag-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}