On the limitations of etymology:

[Theophylact]

Wise words from The Volokh Conspiracy:

Slavocracy: A reader writes:

[In your] post on Buchanan and slavery[,] you refer to the south as a "Slavocracy." Wouldn't this mean a land ruled by slaves, just as a oligarchy is a land ruled by the few and a democracy is a land ruled by the people?

One would think so, just as one would think that a womanizer is a surgeon who performs male-to-female sex-change operations. But the life of the language has not been logic, but experience (apologies to Oliver Wendell Holmes, to forestall further plagiarism allegations), and the term "slavocracy" has meant more or less "persons or interest formerly representing slavery politically, or wielding political power for the preservation or advancement of slavery" since (I believe) the mid-1800s.

So: those who think that "homophobic" must mean fear of homosexuals, rather than hatred, are simply missing the point; that's not the way the word is used.

Ditto for "antiSemitism"; it doesn't mean "opposition to Semites"; it means "hatred of Jews".

[quux]

Might it be that portmanteaus, especially if it is neologisms (see http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophobic) are especially difficult to handle ?

Anyway, I agree that there is not always much logic in language and of course there is a reason for the semantics-pragmatics distinction.

Nice "Conspiracy" .

CC.

To digress a bit, Paul, can you explain in a few words why exactly there is antisemitism (hatred for Jews) even today in Western Europe and elsewhere?

Is it only the religious history or anything else. I feel very ignorant and uninformed of this.

[Theophylact]

Gee, shahani, I don't really feel qualified to venture an opinion on that one.

I'm not sure just how much of an upsurge there is in the first place; I'm not willing to conflate antiSemitism with anti-Israel sentiment; and I think there's a lot of generalized xenophobia and anti-immigrant feeling out there that always seems to find Jews a convenient target for an otherwise diffuse hatred.

Anyway, I was making a more abstract point about language. People seem to think that etymologies and dictionaries settle all arguments about meaning; they don't.

[RADAR1797]

While I was in Germany I took a tour of the Jewish Ghetto pre Hitler. Now the term Ghetto has taken on a different definition these days, but at that time it was the area that the Jews lived (normally by edict). Anyhow this area of Berlin was filled with beautiful and expensive houses. The tour director later on explained that the Jewish population of Germany filled an important void. Apparently many years ago the Catholic church condemned working in the banking industry or money trade. The Jews not having that restraint filled the economic void. Hence as a population they managed a significant portion of the money, ending up being envied and hated. Not sure of the accuracy of the story, but it was an intriguing part of the tour. BTW, those houses that the Nazis stole and whose occupants were killed became family housing for US military in Berlin.

-RADAR

[Theophylact]

RADAR1797, the story is accurate as far as it goes (though it was hardly just the Catholic Church or just Germany; the word "ghetto" is Italian, and the first ghetto was in Venice). But it trivializes the situation; Jews were barred from most occupations and were forbidden to own land, so only despised trades (such as moneylending and performing music) were open to them.

By the way: Judaism, Christianity and Islam all forbid lending money at interest. The Jews have dealt with this by deciding that it's okay to lend at interest to non-Jews; The Christian, first by allowing the borrowing to come from non-Christians, and now by pretending the issue doesn't exist. Only Muslims follow the letter of the law (but consult ClubMed, for instance, on Islam's alternatives to interest).