DO YOU long for the not-so-distant days when people used 鈥渉opefully鈥� correctly 鈥� as in 鈥渢o travel hopefully鈥� 鈥� rather than to modify a whole sentence, as in 鈥淗opefully, today I will win the lottery鈥�? Were you amazed and appalled when the expression 鈥淣ot!鈥� was invented in the late 1980s? Do you feel like stabbing yourself with a fork when a brand-new word like Stephen Colbert鈥檚 鈥渢ruthiness鈥� becomes popular?
鈥淲ere you appalled when the expression 鈥楴ot!鈥� was invented in the late 1980s?鈥�
If so, you might be surprised that according to the Oxford English Dictionary, all these questions are based on a false premise. 鈥淗opefully鈥� has been used to mean 鈥渓et us hope鈥� since at least 1932. 鈥淣ot!鈥� has been used in the Wayne鈥檚 World sense as far back as 1860. And 鈥渢ruthiness鈥� was used in 1824.
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Being convinced of the newness of a word, meaning, construction or phrase that is in fact long established places you among the victims of the 鈥渞ecency illusion鈥�, one of the hazards that plague people who take an interest in language.
Stanford linguist Arnold Zwicky coined the term, and he defined it on the linguistics blog as: 鈥渢he belief that things you have noticed only recently are in fact recent鈥�. A typical example discussed on the blog involved a blogger who believed that the sports expression 鈥減ulled within two points鈥� was a recent invention, probably by US sportscaster Marv Albert. In reality, variations date back to the 19th century.
Zwicky鈥檚 recency illusion has alerted Language Log bloggers to other word-watching pitfalls, including the infrequency illusion: the belief that a feature you have just noticed is rarer and more notable than it is. Then there is the antiquity illusion: that something familiar to you has been common for a long time. Or the out-group illusion: the tendency to blame undesirable language trends on some other group of people. And finally, there is the adolescent illusion: a 鈥渒ids these days鈥� version of the out-group illusion.
A gender-specific case of the adolescent illusion came to light when Mark Liberman, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and co-founder of Language Log, received an email expressing surprise that George W. Bush had used the words 鈥渓ike totally鈥�. As many people do, the emailer associated 鈥渓ike totally鈥� with young people, especially young women and girls. Liberman consulted various collections of phone-conversation transcripts, and found that 鈥渓ike totally鈥� was widely used by men and women of all ages 鈥� and middle-aged men actually use it more.
Why are there so many ways of guessing wrong? Much of it is to do with a tendency to overestimate the importance of our own experience: if something is new to us, we assume it is new to everyone. And perhaps the universality of language exaggerates the effect. We might not put so much trust in our gut feelings about archaeology or nuclear medicine.
