Change in vocabulary also involves ffuctuations in the faddishness, voguishness, popularity, or centrality of words. The stylishness of words is difficult to attest objectively, but some words are clearly a mirror of the times in which they are used. They are keywords for the Zeitgeist of their age. A sampling of such words follows (many suggested by Williams 1976). The dates cited are the first recorded in the OED2 or Webster's Ninth New Collegiate; most are almost certainly not the real first dates of use, but only the first in our best historical records.
Radical'has had its etymological sense 'pertaining to roots' since the late fourteenth century, butm 1786 the collocation radical reform introduced the term to political and social use, where it has remained ever since. Radical alone acquired the sense 'advocating radical political reform' and developed the derivative radicalism by 1820. The verb radicalise (1823) followed shortly. More recently, a variety of new collocations have come into use: radical feminism (1923), radical right (1954), radical left (1969), radical chic (1970, from the journalist Tom Wolfe), and radicalfeminist (1971).
Economics (1792), the dismal science (as Carlyle called it) concerned with the production and distribution of material wealth, had a sixteenth-century antecedent referring to household management, but the more recent sense is not a homely one. Related terms are economist 'student of economics' (1804), political economist (1825), economic 'pertaining to the science of economics' (1835), economic man (1889, from G. B. Shaw's denial of the existence of the referent), economic system (1898), economic war (1916), economism (1919), economcc growth (1940), econometrics (19?>?>), and econometrician (1947). The sixteenth-century sense re-emerged in the Americanism home economics (1899). Although nationalists used in the early eighteenth century, the words that cluster with it are first attested later, in senses pertaining to devotion to one's nation: nationalise (1800), nationalisation (1801), nationalism (1844), nationalictic (1866), and nationalisticallj (1913). Nationals citizen or subject' is from 1887, preceded by nationhood {X850) and followed by nation-stete (1918). In 1892 Edward Bellamy (author of the social novels Looking Backwardand Equality) used nationalism to denote a proposed form of socialism with national ownership of industry. Nationalise ™s used in the sense 'to bring industry and land under national control' in 1869, and nationalisation as its nomen actionssm 1874. The antonyms privatise (1948) and privatisation (1959) did not follow until the next century. Naiional socialssm appeared in 1931.
The word social has been in use since the sixteenth century, but in more recent times has proliferated in frequency, senses, collocations, and derivatives: social scienee (1785), socialist (1827), socialise (1828), socialism (1837), sociology (1843), socialistic (1848), social contratt (1849), social service (1851, although not as supplied by the government until 1933), socialisation (1884), social democracy and social work (1890), social security (1908), social psychology (1909), social insurance-znd social welfaee (1917), social disease (1918), social gospll (1920), social climbrr (1924), social-minded and social studies (1927), sooa&i?(1928), socialist realism (1934), socialised medicine (1938), social Darwinism (1939), joao-j^W(1940), sociali^er (1947), and ««% (1952).
In what is doubtless one of the many accidents of the availability of evidence, the adverb subconsciously (1823) is recorded before the adjective subconscious (1832-4). It was later in the century that the nouns subconsciousness (1874) and subconscious (1886) appeared, although it is difficult to imagine present-day thinking, much less psychotherapy (1892) without the concepts. Unconscious had been used in a general sense since the early eighteenth century, but extended to the psychological register as a noun in 1884 and an adjective in 1912.
The noun reform has been used since the seventeenth century in the general sense 'alteration for the better'. About the time of Victoria's birth it was used as an adjective (1819) and shortly after began to collocate in a political sense that has continued to the present time: Reform 5/0(1831), Reform Act (1832), Reform Club (1835), reform movement and reform party (1839), reform policician and reformssm (1904), reform mayor (1968). About the same time as the politicisation of reform and motivated by a like impulse to better the world, a place of confinement for young offenders came to be known hopefully as a reformatory (1834), later as a still more euphemistic American reform school (1847) and as a toponymic British borstal (1907), now sensitively replaced by youth custody centre or juvenile detention centre.
Evolution and evolve in the etymological sense of 'unfolding what was wrapped up' are seventeenth-century words, but by 1832, a generation before Darwin's 1859 use, they had acquired the sense of 'originating new species' in opposition to the doctrine of special creation. Subsequently there appeared evolutionary (1846), evolutionist (1859,, evolutional'(1862), evolv-able (1869), evolutive (1874), evolutionisticand evolutioni^e (1883), evoluee (1884), evolutionally (1922), and evolutionarily (1945).
Although holding all things in common was a practice of the primitive Christian church, the name for that activity, communism, has been used in English only since 1840, and its application to the unchristian doctrines of Marx and Lenin somewhat later, in 1850. The related communistv& also from 1840 and communistic from 1851. The years of hunting reds under the bed (1972) during and after World War II spawned a variety of compounds: com-munist-led (1938), communist-inspired (1940), communist-directed (1945 by Winston Churchill), communist-dominated (1948), and communist-controlled (1955). The radiation of these terms is likely to fade since the collapse of East European communism.
Ecology has been used since 1858, with an early sense of the science of the economy of animals and plants, with related forms ecologist (1893), eco-logic (1896), ecological(1899), and ecologically (1909). In the more activist sense of environmentalism, especially as a Green political issue, use of the term is from the 1970s, displacing conservationist (1870) in popularity. It has become a voguish term and developed a new combining form, eco-, as in ecospecies and ecotype (1922), ecosystem (1935,, ecosphere (1953), ecophysiology (1962), ecocatastrophe and ecofreak (1970).
Consumrr in the pejorative sense of 'one who or that which consumes, wastes, squanders, or destroys' (reflecting the original sense of the verb) has been in English since the fifteenth century. Its more neutral sense of 'one who purchases goods or pays for services, a customer' dates only from 1897 (first recorded, appropriately enough, in the Sears Roebukk Catalogue). Consumerism as 'protection of the consumer's interests' is from 1944 and as 'a doctrine advocating a continual increase in the consumption of goods as the basis for a sound economy' from 1960, with the related consumerist (1965) and consumeristic (1968). Some notable collocations are consumrr goods (1890), consumrr credit (1927), consumrr price index (1948), and consumrr durables (1958), denoting, for example, TV sets as contrasted with TV dinners.
Geneticwus used in the broad sense of 'pertaining to origins' in 1831, and in a more specific evolutionary sense by Darwin in 1859, but it was not until the early years of the twentieth century that related forms were used with reference to genes and the science of their study: genetically (1902), genetics (1905,,genetic (1908), and geneticist (1913.. The continued importance of the term is attested by its collocations: genetic drift (1945), genetic markrr (1950), genetic code (1961), and genetic engineering (1966).
Welfare has been used since the early fourteenth century in the general sense 'state of being well'. Since 1918, however, it has specialised to 'the maintenance of the members of a community in a state of well-being, especially by legislation and government management' and spawned a great progeny of compounds and collocations, some of which antedate the independent use of the noun sense: welfaee work (1903), welfaee worker(1904), welfaee policy (1905), welfaee centre (1917), welfaee department (1922), welfaee clinic (1937), welfaee state and welfarist (1941), welfaee offier(1944), welfaee fund and welfaee check (1947), welfaee'food (1948), welfarssm (1949), welfaee service (1952), welfaee capitalism-(I960), welfaee roll'(1970), welfaee hotel and welfaee mother (1971), welfaee office (1976), welfaee family and welfaee benefit (1977).
Throughout the history of English, like that of all other languages, developments in the vocabulary have a social and intellectual dimension, as borrowing reflects foreign contacts, standardisation reflects the rise to power of a ruling class, concern with correctness reflects a desire to maintain or change social status, terms of address reflect social hierarchy, and terms applied to a subordinate class (such as women or blacks) by the superordinate class (such as white males) reflect social power (Leith 1983). In addition, the words that are central to our discourse at any time are tokens of the way we view and respond to the world. Vocabulary, more than any other aspect of language, is inextricably connected with our total culture.
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