Many of the words we use these days mean very different things to what they used to.
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For example the word nice once meant foolish, while there was a time silly meant happy, blissful or fortunate.
By the same token warp once meant to throw, while the word throw meant to twist.
If that's not weird enough, awful once meant commanding profound respect or fear, and cloud once referred to a hill or mass of rock, so hundreds of years ago when people buried their valuables in a hill they were really the earliest examples of saving things to the cloud.
You want more?
Okay, dinner once referred to the first meal of the day during which you would break your fast, surly described someone lordly or majestic, and travel was something you definitely didn't want to do, as it referred to hard work or even an instrument of torture.
And while language experts will trace the evolution of words through a range of different trends and phases, it seems the process continues to this very day.
Take the word communication, for example, which is being bent, damaged and altered under the weight of bureaucracies.
Government departments of all levels have set up communications departments, but it seems none of them are about the free and open supply of information.
Unlike the common perception of communication, these so-called communication departments seem designed to manage, block and withhold the information that people so desperately seek.
Maybe it's just the spread of the practice of politicians, who only answer the questions they want to answer, and frequently misdirect questions with phrases like, "Well, that's not the question that the people are asking me. What they want to know is ..."
And then they launch into their well-rehearsed hash of words.
Or maybe it's just that manipulative sods are trying to force through changes that none of us really want or need.
