The etymological fallacy is a genetic fallacy

Genetic fallacy

The genetic fallacy is a fallacy of irrelevance where a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone's origin rather than its current meaning or context. This overlooks any difference to be found in the present situation, typically transferring the positive or negative esteem from...

 that holds, erroneously, that the historical meaning of a word or phrase is necessarily similar to its actual present-day meaning. This is a linguistic

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 misconception, mistakenly identifying a word's current semantic field

Semantic field

A semantic field is a technical term in the discipline of linguistics to describe a set of words grouped by meaning in a certain way. The term is also used in other academic disciplines, such as anthropology and computational semiotics.-Definition and usage:...

 with its etymology. An argument only constitutes an etymological fallacy if it makes a claim about the present meaning of a word based exclusively on its etymology, thus distinguishing an alleged "true" (etymological) meaning from the workaday use.

A variant of the etymological fallacy involves looking for the "true" meaning of words by delving into their etymologies. A similar concept is that of false friend

False friend

False friends are pairs of words or phrases in two languages or dialects that look or sound similar, but differ in meaning....

s.

Prerequisites

An etymological fallacy becomes possible when a word has changed its meaning

Semantic change

Semantic change, also known as semantic shift or semantic progression describes the evolution of word usage — usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from the original usage. In diachronic linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the meanings of a word...

 over time. Such changes can include a shift in scope (narrowing or widening of meanings) or of connotation (amelioration or pejoration). In some cases, meanings can also shift completely, so that the etymological meaning has no evident connection to the current meaning.

For example:

• The word hound originally simply meant "dog" in general. This usage is now archaic or poetic only, and hound now almost exclusively refers to dogs bred for the chase in particular.
• The meaning of a word may change to connote higher status, as when knight, originally "servant" like German Knecht, came to mean "military knight" and subsequently "someone of high rank".
• Conversely, the word knave originally meant "boy" and only gradually acquired its meaning of "person of low, despicable character".
• The word lady derives from Old English hlæf-dige ("loaf-digger; kneader of bread"), and lord from hlafweard ("loaf-ward; ensurer, provider of bread"). No connection with bread is retained in the current meaning of either word.

Examples

Not every change in meaning provokes an etymological fallacy; but such changes are frequently the basis of inaccurate arguments.

• From the fact that logos
  Logos
  ' is an important term in philosophy, psychology, rhetoric and religion. Originally a word meaning "a ground", "a plea", "an opinion", "an expectation", "word," "speech," "account," "reason," it became a technical term in philosophy, beginning with Heraclitus ' is an important term in...
  
  is Greek for "word", Stuart Chase
  Stuart Chase
  Stuart Chase was an American economist and engineer trained at MIT. His writings covered topics as diverse as general semantics and physical economy. His hybrid background of engineering and economics places him in the same philosophical camp as R. Buckminster Fuller...
  
   concluded in his book The Tyranny of Words that logic
  Logic
  In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
  
   was mere manipulation of words.
• Some dictionaries of old languages do not distinguish gloss
  Gloss
  A gloss is a brief notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the reader's language if that is different....
  
  es (meanings) from etymologies, as when Old English  is defined as "one who sits on the same rowing bench; companion". Here the only attested meaning is the second one, while the first is simply the word's etymology.
• Usage of the word gyp "cheat" has been described as being politically incorrect because it is probably derived from Gypsy.
• Phrases like to grow smaller or to climb down have been criticised for being incoherent, based on the "true" meanings of grow and climb.

Pitfalls

While the assumption that a word may still be used etymologically can be fallacious, the conclusion from such reasoning is not necessarily false. Some words can retain their meaning for many centuries, with extreme cases like mouse, which denoted the same animal in the Proto-Indo-European language

Proto-Indo-European language

The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...

 several thousand years ago (as ). Claiming "Your use of the word X is based on an etymological fallacy, therefore the use is wrong" constitutes an argument from fallacy

Argument from fallacy

Argument from fallacy is the formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false...

.

Consequently, etymological arguments do not answer the question when a word should be considered having changed in meaning, when a new meaning is a misuse, when an old meaning becomes archaic, and similar. Such problems are complex and are treated in the field of lexical semantics

Lexical semantics

Lexical semantics is a subfield of linguistic semantics. It is the study of how and what the words of a language denote . Words may either be taken to denote things in the world, or concepts, depending on the particular approach to lexical semantics.The units of meaning in lexical semantics are...

.

External links

• Discussion of the etymological fallacy at Language Log
  Language Log
  Language Log is a collaborative language blog maintained by University of Pennsylvania phonetician Mark Liberman.The site is updated daily at the whims of the contributors, and most of the posts are on language use in the media and popular culture. Google search results are frequently used as a...