Grammar Girl here, I'm in Yon Fog, your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff.

Today we'll talk about smelly skunked words and how you can use pronouns to be more persuasive.

As we've discussed many times, language is constantly changing,

and one phenomenon that shines a light on language change is the skunking of words.

Do you get your knickers in a knot when someone uses a word in a way that doesn't match its

original meaning?

Or when someone uses a word that sounds old-fashioned?

Well, it's probably because that word has been skunked.

The term skunked was introduced by lexicographer Brian A Garner in his book Garner's Modern American usage

where he described a skunked word as one whose meaning is going through a change that's hotly disputed.

Words change or take on new meanings all the time without any problems, but skunked words

are something different.

Prescriptivists, those who stand by the traditional usage of language in its rules, typically hold firm to the original meaning of skunked terms, while descriptivists, those who are more progressive

and accepting of new usages, are more likely to welcome their new meanings.

As an article in The Better Editor of New England blog notes, during the transition the skunked terms,

may smell bad to both sides, unquote." For example, the very first word Garner labeled as skunked

was hopefully, which originally was an adverb, meaning with hope, as in squiggly waited hopefully for a piece of chocolate

with hopefully modifying the verb waited

But way back in 1702

Someone used it to mean, I hope, to modify a whole sentence. As in, hopefully, chocolate will be on sale soon.

That use has grown ever since and linguistic sticklers who don't

...