Etymological Fallacy

58 Etymological Fallacy

Leigh Kolb

The etymological fallacy (EF) concerns how a word’s history is used to argue about its present meaning. According to Merriam-Webster, etymology is “the history of a linguistic form (as a word) shown by tracing its development since its earliest recorded occurrence in the language where it is found […] by analyzing it into its component parts,” and by tracing and identifying it through translated languages and cognates. The origin of etymon is Latin, from Greek: the “literal meaning of a word according to its origin, from etymos, true; akin to Greek eteos, true.” The logy suffix refers to a scientific area of study, but its origin is from the Greek logos, which means, “word.” An etymon, then, is “an earlier form of a word in the same language or an ancestral language.”

Tracing a word’s origins can explain its development. The EF arises when that history is treated as sufficient to determine how the word is or should be used now. Someone may deliberately choose a convenient older meaning, but the error need not be intentional. In logical terms, the fallacy takes the form: Person A claims that because the historical meaning of a word is X, the current meaning should also be X.

As Jesse Sheidlower (2001) points out in “What Is, And Isn’t, In a Word,” in The New York Times: “Some words also fall prey to what linguists refer to as the ‘etymological fallacy,’ the belief that a word’s history has a strong bearing on how it is, or should be, used.” He goes on to explain that many words change meaning without raising any question, but that the words that most often fall prey to the EF are the ones that are, or are perceived as, offensive.

A simple illustration is the word awful. Etymologically, awful meant “to inspire awe.” Yet virtually no one uses it in that sense today; insisting that a terrible experience was actually awe-inspiring simply because the word once carried that meaning would be a clear etymological fallacy. The term genocide supplies another example. This account dates Raphael Lemkin’s coinage to 1943. Whether a definition includes religious groups must be established by examining that definition and its use; it cannot be settled by whether the word’s component roots explicitly mention religion.

The source discusses controversy and lawsuits over the Washington, DC, NFL team’s use of the name Washington Redskins (Gandhi 2013). Many Native American groups (and their allies) have fought against the use of the name redskins, which carries with it the terms “derogatory,” “offensive,” “outdated,” and “disparaging slang” in modern dictionary definitions. Sports journalist Baxter Holmes (2014) writes in Esquire that the true meaning of the term “redskin” was the scalps of Native Americans who were killed and mutilated for a bounty. After receiving challenges and pushback from readers, he writes another article and includes an excerpt from an 1863 newspaper in Minnesota that explicitly offers money from the state for each “red-skin” produced.

During that dispute, the team owners defended the name through a website and supporting material that relied heavily on its claimed origins. RedskinFacts.com claims that the origin of the word redskins was “benign” and self-referential, relying on one linguist’s conclusion that “redskins” was created by Native Americans as an inclusive expression of solidarity. The site relies on the etymon to support the decision not to change the name. In court, “The team’s attorneys and linguistics experts argued that this demonstrated that the term had never really been disparaging – just a ‘robust informal synonym’ for ‘American Indian,’ which dictionaries only started to label as offensive in response to political pressure from a few Indian activists” (Nunberg 2014). The EF ignores change, connotations, and context. In his article, Sheidlower (2001) says,

Guidelines for words’ usage are determined not by their history (real or imagined), but by someone who cares one way or the other having the power to convince an audience. Groups that have – or gain – political power can have an influence on what they are called […] the concerns of Native Americans have not been taken as seriously (which is also why “Redskins” and “Braves” are still used as the names of professional sports teams).

The EF, when used to attempt to uphold the status quo of offensive language, is typically committed in favor of the dominant political/social group.

Of course, not every fallacious use of etymons involves offensive language. In Nonsense: A Handbook of Logical Fallacies, Robert J. Gula (2002) uses the example of an atheist trying to convince a religious person that religion is not about love: it “ties man down; it tries to control him; it shackles and enslaves. Nowhere is love even suggested.” The atheist attempts to support his argument this way: “Look at the very words we use. The word reverence comes from the Latin word vereor, a word that means ‘fear.’ […] And even the word religion itself comes from the Latin religo, a verb that means ‘to bind’ or ‘to fetter’” (48). Gula points out that this argument is fallacious since it ignores that words change, thus making an argument against something based on the Latin roots of a word is not a good argument at all.

To assess a claim about meaning, examine how the word is used in the relevant time, community and context. Dictionaries and examples of actual usage can document a change. Etymology supplies historical evidence, but it does not override that evidence of use.

A proposed “modern” definition also needs evidence. Rejecting an unsupported redefinition is not automatically an etymological fallacy. The question is what the historical and contemporary evidence establish, rather than which meaning a speaker prefers.

The source describes a period when the team was still defending the name and some news organizations had stopped using it. In 2013, Pew Research reported that journalists and media outlets – 76 at that point – had spoken up about the word “Redskins” and in many cases restricted or banned it in their publications.

Gula (2002) says, “The etymology of a word does not necessarily constitute any evidence about how the word is being used. A word is important, not for what it once meant, but what it means now” (48). Sheidlower’s conclusion is similar: “A word’s ‘real meaning’ according to its etymology may not match the ‘real meaning’ of its context and usage. And in matters of taste, it is the usage – the way that we and the words we speak every day exist in the world – that is always the deciding factor.” Clinging to etymons while ignoring the evolution and everyday use of language is neither logical nor truthful.