You've probably heard it before. Maybe from a frustrated English teacher or a pedantic uncle at Thanksgiving. "You’re hurting the word!" they exclaim when someone uses "literally" to describe something that definitely didn’t happen, or when "decimate" is used to mean total destruction instead of its historical one-tenth. It’s a common complaint. People get protective over language because words are how we map our reality. When the map changes, it feels like the ground is shifting under our feet.
But here is the thing: is hurting a word actually possible?
Language isn't a museum piece. It’s more like a forest. It grows, it sheds old leaves, and sometimes a species of meaning goes extinct while a new one takes over the clearing. If you look at the history of English, the words we use today are almost all "corrupted" versions of something else. We aren’t breaking the language; we’re just the ones holding the baton right now.
The Myth of Word Damage
The idea that a word can be "hurt" usually stems from prescriptivism. This is the belief that there is a "correct" way to speak and write, and anything else is a degradation. If you use a word "wrong," you’re supposedly diluting its power.
Take the word "peruse." Most people use it to mean "to skim." In reality, the traditional definition is "to read thoroughly or carefully." If you tell a prescriptivist you perused a magazine at the doctor's office, they might tell you that you’re hurting the word by flipping its meaning upside down. They aren't entirely wrong about the history, but they are wrong about how humans communicate.
Language is a consensus. If 90% of people agree that "peruse" means to skim, then for all practical purposes, that is what the word means. The original meaning becomes a vestige. It’s like an appendix. We still have it, but we don't really use it for its original purpose anymore.
Is the word hurt? Not really. It’s just evolved.
When Meaning Shifts: The Great Semantic Slide
Linguists call this "semantic drift." It happens slowly, then all at once. Usually, it follows a pattern of generalization or specialization.
- Generalization: A word with a specific meaning starts being used for everything. "Awesome" used to be reserved for things that literally inspired awe—like a volcanic eruption or a divine revelation. Now, a decent taco is awesome.
- Pejoration: A word becomes more negative over time. "Silly" used to mean "blessed" or "innocent" in Middle English. Now it means you're acting like a goofball.
- Amelioration: The opposite of pejoration. "Nice" used to mean "ignorant" or "foolish" in the 14th century. We definitely haven't hurt that word by making it a compliment.
Wait. If we change a word from "ignorant" to "pleasant," is that damage? Of course not. It's just utility. We needed a word for "pleasant," and "nice" was available for a promotion.
The Case of "Literally"
This is the big one. The final boss of the "is hurting a word" debate.
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In 2013, Google and various dictionaries (including Merriam-Webster and Oxford) added a second definition to "literally." This new definition acknowledged that people use the word for emphasis, even when the situation is figurative. People lost their minds. It felt like the white flag had been raised.
But here is a fun fact: great writers have been "hurting" this word for centuries. Mark Twain used it figuratively. So did F. Scott Fitzgerald and Charles Dickens. In Nicholas Nickleby, Dickens wrote that a character "literally feasted his eyes." Unless the character was actually eating eyeballs, Dickens was using the "wrong" definition.
If Dickens couldn't hurt the word, you probably can't either.
The Real Danger: Loss of Nuance
If there is a legitimate argument for how we might be "hurting" language, it’s not about "correctness." It’s about precision.
When a word’s specific meaning is lost to a general one, we lose a tool in our shed. If "unique" just means "unusual" instead of "one of a kind," how do we describe something that is truly the only one in existence? We have to add modifiers: "completely unique" or "truly unique."
This creates "lexical inflation." We have to use more words to say the same thing because the individual words have lost their potency. This isn't hurting a word so much as it is making our sentences longer and more cluttered. It’s a trade-off. We gain ease of communication in the short term, but we lose the ability to be surgical with our descriptions.
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Technology and the "Hurting" of Words
The internet has accelerated this process. Memes and social media slang take a word and run it into the ground in six months.
Think about the word "aesthetic." It’s a noun. It’s a branch of philosophy. But on TikTok, it’s an adjective. "That’s so aesthetic." To a linguist, this is fascinating. To a grammarian, it’s physical pain.
We also see "semantic bleaching." This is when a word is used so often that it loses almost all its meaning. "Literally" is the poster child for this, but "slay," "toxic," and "gaslight" are following close behind. When we call every minor disagreement "gaslighting," we hurt our ability to talk about actual psychological abuse. That is a real-world consequence of shifting language. It’s not about the word’s feelings; it’s about our ability to understand each other.
Is Hurting a Word a Sign of Declining Intelligence?
Short answer: No.
Actually, using words in new ways often requires a high level of linguistic creativity. Slang is incredibly complex. Puns, double meanings, and recontextualizing words are signs of a healthy, active brain.
The people who complain about language "decay" have been around forever. In the 1700s, Jonathan Swift (the guy who wrote Gulliver's Travels) complained that English was being ruined by "shortened words" like "mob" (short for mobile vulgus). He thought "mob" was a vulgar degradation of the language. Today, nobody thinks "mob" is a problem.
Language is a living thing. Living things change. The only languages that don't change are dead ones, like Latin. If you want a language where words are never "hurt" and meanings never shift, you have to stop people from speaking it.
How to Navigate Language Change Without Being a Jerk
So, where does this leave you? You want to be understood, but you don't want to be the person correcting everyone’s grammar at a party.
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- Read the room. If you're writing a legal brief, "is hurting a word" becomes a very real problem. Precision matters. Don't use "literally" figuratively in front of a judge.
- Value clarity over "correctness." If the person you are talking to understands what you mean, the word has done its job. If using a word "correctly" makes you sound like a robot or confuses your audience, you've failed at communication.
- Embrace the history. Knowing the original meaning of a word makes you a better writer. It allows you to use the word's "ghost" meanings to add depth to your prose.
- Stop worrying about "damage." English is a rugged, messy, beautiful language. It has survived Viking invasions, the Norman conquest, and the invention of the internet. It can handle a few teenagers using "lowkey" in a weird way.
Moving Forward With Your Vocabulary
The next time you catch yourself saying someone is "hurting a word," take a breath. Ask yourself if the meaning is actually being lost or if it’s just moving.
Next Steps for Better Communication:
- Audit your "filler" words. Are you using "literally" or "basically" because you need them, or because they are verbal crutches? Try to remove them for a day and see how much more punch your sentences have.
- Look up the etymology of your favorite words. Use a site like Online Etymology Dictionary. You’ll be shocked at how many "pure" words started out as slang or mistakes.
- Read widely. The best way to keep a word from being "hurt" in your own vocabulary is to see it used in different contexts. Read 19th-century novels and modern blogs.
In the end, words are tools. We use them until they wear out, then we forge new ones or reshape the old ones to fit the tasks of a new century. The word isn't hurting. It's just working hard.