You're listening to Away with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett.

It seems like just about every time we open our inbox, there's an email from somebody saying,

is this a word? Is that a word?

My boss used the word, incentivize.

Is that really a word?

And a lot of those emails come accompanied with a certain amount of pessimism about the way

the English language is going. Right. Right. Well, perhaps they should think about the fact that

the word pessimism a century or so ago was thoroughly derided by lots and lots of people.

Really? Yes, indeed. Let me read you a couple of...

Here's a writer in 1892

complained about, quote,

the way the word pessimism gets flung about of late.

One encounters it at every turn,

and it is made to serve as the label

of almost every expression of discontent

with the existing order of things.

And then somebody just a few years later wrote,

Who will contribute the first dollar to a fund to furnish definitions of the words optimism and pessimism

to writers who use the words as synonyms of cheerfulness and despondency?

And cheerfulness and despondency seems so, right?

...