“Cool” was hardly the only thing modern vernacular about that sentence. It’s use 80 years ago would not have the same meaning now, and in the syntax of the sentence would seem odd, much like the OP’s usage of contemporary slang.
Believe it or not, just because a word has previously been used as slang doesn’t mean the meaning hasn’t shifted through time. See: “low-key.”
Sure, the point is that 80 years isn’t that long ago. And your example still wouldn’t be so obscure as to be unintelligible at that time, regardles. Believe it or not.
I hear what you’re saying, but my original point was that even in 80 years, accepted syntax, vernacular usage, and general language construction can change quite a bit, so the OP post isn’t that odd. It’s still “intelligible,” and, indeed, language does change. Quite often, in fact.
When I said “nearly unintelligible,” I meant it hyperbolicly to accentuate the fact that the modern language being highlighted by the OP is, similarly, not unintelligible. They are just examples of relatively new language use.
I was highlighting the second sentence due to its modern syntax and the ways many of the words have grown to encompass broader meanings.
Believe it or not, it didn’t even occur to me that “cool” was a slang word that might have shifted in the last 80 years, it’s so deeply embedded in my own idiomatic language that I was using it in that sentence as the word with historical stability in the sentence.
Though, now that I’ve looked into the etymology, the usage in that sentence would also be a bit odd 80 years ago.
Removed by mod
Not to discredit your point, but 80 years ago was 1944, and everybody then would know what you mean by that 2nd sentence.
Cool goes back to Shakespeare and beyond. But it was also popular in the American vernacular in the 1930s.
“Cool” was hardly the only thing modern vernacular about that sentence. It’s use 80 years ago would not have the same meaning now, and in the syntax of the sentence would seem odd, much like the OP’s usage of contemporary slang.
Believe it or not, just because a word has previously been used as slang doesn’t mean the meaning hasn’t shifted through time. See: “low-key.”
Sure, the point is that 80 years isn’t that long ago. And your example still wouldn’t be so obscure as to be unintelligible at that time, regardles. Believe it or not.
I hear what you’re saying, but my original point was that even in 80 years, accepted syntax, vernacular usage, and general language construction can change quite a bit, so the OP post isn’t that odd. It’s still “intelligible,” and, indeed, language does change. Quite often, in fact.
When I said “nearly unintelligible,” I meant it hyperbolicly to accentuate the fact that the modern language being highlighted by the OP is, similarly, not unintelligible. They are just examples of relatively new language use.
I was highlighting the second sentence due to its modern syntax and the ways many of the words have grown to encompass broader meanings.
Believe it or not, it didn’t even occur to me that “cool” was a slang word that might have shifted in the last 80 years, it’s so deeply embedded in my own idiomatic language that I was using it in that sentence as the word with historical stability in the sentence.
Though, now that I’ve looked into the etymology, the usage in that sentence would also be a bit odd 80 years ago.
Word.