>> The phrase “semantic creep” has been used to describe how the meaning of words change over time. What we’re seeing today, according to the psychologist Nick

>> The phrase “semantic creep” has been used to describe how the meaning of words change over time. What we’re seeing today, according to the psychologist Nick Haslam, a professor at the University of Melbourne, could be called “trauma creep” — when the language of the clinical, or at least the clinical-adjacent, is used to refer to an increasingly expansive set of everyday experiences... But as words gain useful new meanings, over time, they can also lose precision. A similar semantic shift might be seen with the term racist. It's my impression that what used to be a term reserved for blatantly discriminatory and prejudiced behavior has shifted to the point where it might be applied to someone who holds a political or economic view that clashes with the person declaring them racist. It sucks the power out of the word, in a way: when being labeled racist once meant something, now it is thrown around so often that it is just another term of abuse.