Language Log

• "Context Shift, Word Drift: The Meaning Transference of the Word Prèet in Thai Society." Kumhaeng, Korrakot et al. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12, no. 1 (July 8, 2025): 1050. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-05454-y.

This research investigates the semantic change and conceptual metaphor of the Thai word prèet (/เปรต/), which originates from the Pali-Sanskrit term meaning “departed.” The primary objective is to explore how the term’s meaning has shifted in contemporary Thai society, where it is now used pejoratively to criticize behaviors such as excessive greed, gluttony, immorality, and social deviance. Data for this study are drawn from both historical texts, particularly the Traibhumi Phra Ruang (a prominent Thai Buddhist text from the 14th-century Sukhothai period), and modern Thai linguistic usage. The analysis employs conceptual metaphor theory, focusing on metaphors like SOCIAL DEVIANCE IS MONSTROSITY, MORAL FAILURE IS DEGRADATION, GREED IS HUNGER, and SPIRITUAL LIMINALITY IS MONSTROSITY. to understand how these shifts reflect changing cultural and societal values. Additionally, Impoliteness Theory is applied to examine how prèet functions as a linguistic tool for social critique. Findings show that the semantic evolution of prèet reveals an intricate relationship between language, culture, and metaphor, as it transitions from a religious concept to a vehicle for social commentary. The implications of this study highlight the dynamic nature of language in reflecting societal shifts.

Commenters noted the ambiguity of this sentence quoted earlier today in "Rococo":

When President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, he wasted little time redecorating.

From Bob Ladd: "I was genuinely uncertain when I read the sentence about 'wasting little time' whether Trump had in fact gone right to work redecorating or rather had decided not to bother.

When I was going through the TSA checkpoint in Philadelphia at the beginning of this run down the Mississippi, something very unfortunate happened.  The TSA agent who was going through my carry-on belongings approached me and said, "Is this your stick?" "Yes, sir," I replied.

"I have a problem with your stick," he said.

"What's wrong with it?", I asked him.

"It's a blunt instrument."

"It's my walking stick," I said.

"You can't fly with this stick," he insisted.  "It's a blunt instrument."

"But, sir, I've flown with it dozens of times, often right through Philadelphia, through this very checkpoint."

Email from a reader:

In the last several years, when receiving instructive information from gen Z in places of business, I have noticed a regular use of the FUTURE tense, when the present would perfectly suffice. Sometimes, but not always, this is combined with telling me what I WILL WANT to do. To wit,

– "you WILL WANT TO ____"
– "the beverages WILL BE on the back of the menu"

There is nothing "wrong" grammatically or logically with any of this (as if there could be). It is perfectly accurate and cromulent. But these forms are relatively new, I conjecture. Even a little jarring.

I can posit my own hypotheses regarding how and why these usages increased in prevalence in recent tears. Is there a literature on it, perhaps already covered by Language Log?

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-fifty-ninth issue: “Lawrence Scott Davis (1951–2024),” by Lothar von Falkenhausen.

Next year  E. J. Brill will publish a book by the little-known but highly accomplished Sino-anthropologist L. Scott Davis, in which he pioneers a novel, anthropological interpretation of the Chinese classics. The book demonstrates how certain motifs and images in the Yijing (Classic of Changes), the Lunyu (Confucian Analects), and the Zuo zhuan (Zuo Tradition) are strategically deployed as structuring elements so as to meld these texts into a semantic continuum. Unfortunately, the author passed away this fall without being able to see his book in print; this obituary aims to make him and his life’s work better known to the scholarly community.

From Frederick Newmeyer:

I recently had to cancel a flight with Delta Airlines and was directed to their webpage that discusses what to do to get a refund. I found the following bizarre instruction:

Please retain the ticket/document number(s) below as they have become an eCredit and the remaining value can be used to rebook a flight within one year or more from the original purchase date.

What on earth does ‘within one year or more’ mean? Taken literally, it means that I could rebook a flight five years from now, but they can’t possibly mean that. All attempts to get an explanation from Delta have failed. Can anybody explain what ‘within one year or more’ might mean?

This is something I was going to write about in the early part of December, 2023, but got sidetracked by too many other things.  Now I'm going through my e-mail clutter to clean out old messages that I had neglected to take care of back then.  At that time, more than half a year ago, "PUA" was still very popular.  Although speech fashions change rapidly in China, it was so viral then that I suspect it is still relevant today, so let's take a good look at it.

When I first encountered "PUA", I had no idea what it meant nor how to pronounce it (the same sort of feeling of being at sea when I initially heard "hawk tuah"), so I started looking around for what it might mean.  Clearly, from the contexts in which I was hearing it, PUA was not "Pandemic Unemployment Assistance", which was a federal and state government program back in the day.

I fairly quickly came to the realization that the term "PUA" is derived from the American English phrase “pick-up artist”.  Well, I'd never heard of that either, so had to educate myself about that too.

[This is a guest post from Brett Powley]

Yesterday in one of my classes, a female student from China said that she didn't like to exercise in the morning because she felt "wet".  At first, I couldn't believe my ears, so I asked her, "Did you say 'wet'?"  "Yes," she said, "wet".  I couldn't understand in what way she would feel "wet" in the morning and how that would prevent her from doing exercises.

We wouldn't use the English word "wet" to describe a morning condition that would discourage us from doing exercises, so I tried to think of other related words (synonyms or near-synonyms for "wet") that would work better.  "Logy"? "sodden"? "heavy"?  But I couldn't come up with any equivalent words that would fit the bill.  I specifically was disinclined to choose the word "shī 濕", which literally does mean "wet", but didn't believe that's what she meant because it would signify something like "drenched", "dripping", "soaked", not a systemic condition of the body, unless it means something in traditional Chinese medicine that I'm not aware of.

I puzzled over this conundrum for a while without making any significant progress, so today I sent her an e-mail asking the following question:  "What Chinese word / concept did you have in mind when you said you felt 'wet' in the morning"?

Evan Boehs, "Everything I Know About the Xz Backdoor", 3/29/2024:

In April 2022, Jia Tan submits a patch via a mailing list. The patch is irrelevant, but the events that follow are.

Continuing our series on dragons, this note and illustration come from Juha Janhunen, the Finnish linguist:

Happy Blue Dragon Year to everybody! Below is the official flag (1889-1912) of the Manchu Empire (in the west misleadingly known as "China"), which happens to have a blue dragon on it. Manchu muduri 'dragon' still seems to lack an external etymology. Any suggestions?

(See at the very bottom of this post for a possible connection to "otter".)

A matter that requires nuancing: Jinyi Kuang and Cristina Bicchieri, "Language matters: how normative expressions shape norm perception and affect norm compliance", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2024:

Abstract: Previous studies have used various normative expressions such as ‘should’, ‘appropriate’ and ‘approved’ interchangeably to communicate injunctions and social norms. However, little is known about whether people's interpretations of normative language differ and whether behavioural responses might vary across them. In two studies (total n = 2903), we find that compliance is sensitive to the types of normative expressions and how they are used. Specifically, people are more likely to comply when the message is framed as an injunction rather than as what most people consider good behaviour (social norm framing). Behaviour is influenced by the type of normative expression when the norm is weak (donation to charities), not so when the norm is strong (reciprocity). Content analysis of free responses reveals individual differences in the interpretation of social norm messages, and heterogeneous motives for compliance. Messages in the social norm framing condition are perceived to be vague and uninformative, undermining their effectiveness. These results suggest that careful choice of normative expressions is in order when using messages to elicit compliance, especially when the underlying norms are weak.

…this one in a headline — Toby Helm, "Sadiq Khan: 'Free young people from Brexit work and travel ban", The Guardian 1/20/2024.