July 22
“Good morning, sir”
“Good morning.”
“It is within walking distance; it is a
walkable distance — which is correct sir?”
“Both are correct, and both are used. But
‘within walking distance’ is more
frequently used than the other.”
“Sir, can you use ‘sophisticated’ in the
sense of ‘cultured’?”
“I notice that it is used in this sense these
days. Words change their meaning with
the passage of time. ‘Sophisticated’ is a
very interesting word. The word is from
Greek ‘sophos’ meaning ‘wisdom’.
Philosophy means ‘love of wisdom’. With
some it means ‘love of sofas’. In Greece,
till the middle of the fifth century B.C., the
word ‘sophist’ was used to refer to seers
and sages. Later it referred to those who
taught wisdom as a profession. In the
course of time, the teaching of the sophists
deteriorated. Instead of teaching wisdom,
they tended to teach easier things like
rhetoric and subtle reasoning. They were
clever at the art of making the worse
appear the better. Hence sophism came to
mean ‘clever, subtle but false reasoning’.
This sense is retained in the word
‘sophistry’. Don’t you see the fall from
wisdom? In the middle ages, the word
‘sophisticate’ meant ‘to adulterate, to mix
some inferior substance’. A little later the
word came to mean ‘artificial or deprived
of primitive simplicity and naturalness’.
Later it came to be used in the sense in
which we use it today. The sense is
‘Wordly-wise, urbane, polished’. A
sophisticated person is a cultivated person.
The opposite of sophisticated is
unsophisticated, simple, uncomplicated,
natural. The seventh edition of COD
records ‘worldly-wise’, ‘cultured’ under
sophisticated. The use of ‘sophisticated’ in
the sense of ‘cultured’ is rather recent.
Perhaps one of these days it will get back
its original sense ‘wisdom’.
No living language is static: The meaning,
pronunciation and usage of words change.
What is considered unacceptable today
may be considered acceptable after some
years. For many years, grammarians used
to say that you shouldn’t use ‘aggravate’ in
the sense of ‘annoy or exasperate’. They
felt it should be used only in the sense of
‘make worse’. However, ‘exasperate’ is
given as one of its meanings in dictionaries
published recently. I have said all this so
that you won’t apply some old
grammatical rules to contemporary English
and conclude that contemporary English is
ungrammatical! I hope you follow.”
“Yes, sir. How do you pronounce ‘deity’,
sir?”
“It is pronounced ‘deeiti’, ‘dee’ rhymes
with ‘sea’ and ‘fee’. ‘iti’ rhymes with
‘city’. The stress is on the first syllable.
Let’s call it a day. Goodbye”