{"id":225,"date":"2006-12-05T23:29:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-05T22:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/?p=225"},"modified":"2006-12-05T23:29:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-05T22:29:00","slug":"cocks-asses-and-gay-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/cocks-asses-and-gay-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Cocks, asses and gay people"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\"> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/24hourmoon\/135190565\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.flickr.com\/45\/135190565_30b94e2364_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: solid 2px #000000;\" \/><\/a> <br \/> <span style=\"font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;\">  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/24hourmoon\/135190565\/\">Donkey and Rooster<\/a>  <br \/>  Originally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/24hourmoon\/\">24hourmoon<\/a>. <\/span><\/div>\n<p>English has, for better or worse, changed the semantics of some words.  A <i>cock<\/i> used to be a male hen, an <i>ass<\/i> used to be a donkey, and <i>gay<\/i> used to mean &#8220;merry&#8221;.<br \/>However, in modern English these words have almost entirely taken on new senses, and native speakers have adapted to this.  However, I&#8217;m told a Parisian museum recently opened an exhibition of photos of cocks (and no, it was not a porn exhibition), and I have encountered language teachers abroad who refused to accept that <i>gay<\/i> doesn&#8217;t mean &#8220;merry&#8221; any more.  This is probably not helped by the fact that dictionaries are often a few years behind, and some list senses by etymology, not by current frequency.<br clear=\"all\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donkey and Rooster Originally uploaded by 24hourmoon. English has, for better or worse, changed the semantics of some words. A cock used to be a male hen, an ass used to be a donkey, and gay used to mean &#8220;merry&#8221;.However, in modern English these words have almost entirely taken on new senses, and native speakers have adapted to this. However, I&#8217;m told a Parisian museum recently opened an exhibition of photos of cocks (and no, it was not a porn exhibition), and I have encountered language teachers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-en","category-linguistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}