The old and new of it

[070] ... [General]

I once looked up the dictionary during Is aught being done? Is aught being found out? from an old novel. Aught from those days turned to be Anything that we now use. And as guessed, during Is there naught that we may do to save her?, Naught meant the other way, Nothing. May be I am not literary enough to have come across them things in the hardbound volumes, or gone through the Testament, New or Old.

It's interesting how certain words and expressions turn to being archaic so quickly. In the last two decades we ourselves have seen some disappear. What I say, probably a left over of the British legacy was a familiar expression by an old lecturer, and depending on the tone it conveyed either as a question to know what you wanted, or a grumble when someone did something wrong, both directed to the others than conveying what he wanted to say.

Gay in the past meant being happy, and at present... Capital as an expression by itself is now Bingo or Sooper depending on where you are placed geographically. There are quite a few of such if you start digging.

Now of course there's a shift to abbreviate terms that seems more useful to social media or texting, which many youngsters seem to be growing up with. The advantage we have is we know both the original term which we mentally link to when encountering its short form, and I was wondering if the later generations come to see those as the norm. I once encountered someone who seemed to wonder what an Administrator conveys, being so much used to Admin.

Obviously, people don't have much time to waste on a string of often used words to form a routine expression, or may be they are content to sound similar for the sake of being understood by all in general than putting it differently.

There is naught we can do, if if aught, just accept--at least I thinketh so...