6 Historical Words That Don't Mean What You Think

Originally, Hedonists believed in moderation and Luddites were just looking to protect their job security. Learn about these and other words that've changed their meaning in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/10-historical-words-that-dont-mean-what-you-think.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Lauren vogelbam here. One of the things I love about
language is that it isn't static. It changes and develops
all the time as we interact with it and come
up with personal and communal ways of expressing ourselves. This

(00:22):
can happen with how we put words together in a sentence,
but it can also happen with words themselves. Today, let's
talk about a few words that have changed meanings over time.
A lot of these have to do with the sort
of game of telephone we unwittingly play with history through
our vocabulary. Several words in common use today, like cynic, stoic, hedonist, epicurean, lettie,

(00:45):
and nimrod, come from legends or philosophies from the past.
Let's start with cynic. Today, the word is used to
describe someone who thinks people have selfish or unsavory motivations.
Someone who's cynical tends to look negatively at things and
be suspicious of what others say and do. The original

(01:08):
cynics with a capital C were a sect of ancient
Greek philosophers who got their start around four hundred BCE.
Cynics strived for virtue and believed the only way to
achieve it was through self control, asceticism, and poverty. They
viewed not only luxury, but pleasure itself as bad. The

(01:29):
name cynic comes from a Greek word for dog, and
they seemed to have embraced the comparison. They wanted to
live stripped down, simple lives, a void of the comforts
and social conventions that they believed led away from virtue.
Anecdotes tell of cynics foregoing personal belongings and living in
public spaces, going barefoot even in the snow, and remonstrating

(01:51):
their fellow citizens for indulging themselves. The term first appeared
in English in the fifteen hundred CE, with a capital CC,
referring to the philosophers, but it was soon applied in
a more general, lowercase sea way to mean someone who
finds fault in others and is maybe a little bit
snooty about it, which eventually led to the meaning that

(02:13):
we apply today of someone who's generally suspicious about people
or things. You can see the connection, but it's a
pretty big stretch. Okay, After cynic, though, we have to
talk about the terms hedonist, epicure, and stoic, which are
all related. In popular culture today, the word hedonism is

(02:34):
associated with debauchery. We use hedonistic to refer to someone
who indulges or over indulges in physically pleasurable activities like eating, drinking,
or sex. But hedonism started out as another branch or tree,
or small forest of philosophy in ancient India, China, and Greece.

(02:55):
The English word hedonism is derived from an ancient Greek
word for pleasure. It's most basic hedonism is the philosophy
that the only two things important in life are pleasure
and pain. Pleasure is intrinsically good and valuable, while pain
is intrinsically bad and should be avoided. But pleasure can

(03:16):
mean many different things. A pleasure can be intellectual, like
reading a good book or listening to a good podcast.
It can be altruistic, like helping your neighbor. Or it
can be a physical sensation, anything from the wind blowing
through your hair to a how cup of tea to
yeah as sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Some forms
of hedonist philosophy also make a point to note that

(03:38):
short term pleasure might not be appropriate if it doesn't
result in long term pleasure over pain. The Greek philosopher Epicurus,
who was working around three hundred BC or so, is
considered one of history's most important hedonists. This doesn't mean
he was a wild party guy. Epicurus was what's modernly

(03:59):
called an egoistic hedonist. That is, someone who believes what's
good for you is whatever you yourself enjoy, not what
your mom enjoys, or your best friend or the smartest
person that you know. The Epicurean philosophy is that wild
life should be based on moral virtue. It's really only
worthwhile if everyone enjoys their life in their own way.

(04:21):
Epicureans also believed in moderating all desires, whether for physical
pleasures like food or intellectual pleasures like politics. If a
person indulges in a particular pleasure to freely, the thinking goes,
they run the risk of becoming a servant to that pleasure. So,
though they didn't go as far as cynics, Epicureans advocated

(04:42):
for living simply. This is not at all the modern
meaning of the word epicurean. Today we use the word
to mean someone with a discerning palate who seeks out
fine food and drink. It's a synonym for foody though,
yea all my other podcast is a food podcast and
I hate that word. But anyway, ironically, today's Epicurean is

(05:04):
probably not the type of person that Epicurus would have admired.
All right, So hedonism didn't originally mean debauchery, and Epicureans
believed in moderation. Where does the word stoic come in today?
If we say someone is stoic, we mean that they
approached life in general and hardships in particular, with a

(05:25):
sense of quiet dignity that they don't show and certainly
don't talk about their emotions. Stoicism was another ancient Greek
philosophical movement. It was based in cynicism and was a
major competitor of Epicureanism around the same time that that
movement was popular. A Stoics strived for virtue, but believed

(05:47):
that mastery of physics, logic, and ethics would get you there.
There was an emphasis on understanding the world around you
and within you through learning, meditation, mindfulness, and self examination.
So how did the word become linked with emotionless acceptance?
Stoicism taught that emotions like fear, envy, or passionate love

(06:09):
resulted from false judgments, and so a true stoic would
be immune to them. A virtuous life, a happy life,
was a life that was free from passion. But let's
look at a couple more modern examples. Today, we might
call someone a luddite if they mistrust or dislike modern technology.

(06:32):
You know, someone who doesn't do text messages, or will
only read books if they're printed on the pulped fiber
of dead trees. Again, this is a term with a
clear connection to its original use, but it's gotten seriously garbled.
The original Luttites were a group of experienced weavers from Nottinghamshire, England,
in the early eighteen hundreds. They got a bit hot

(06:53):
under the collar when companies began replacing them with automated
looms during the Industrial Revolution. Gathering together, the weavers dubbed
themselves Luttites, supposedly after a fabled weaving apprentice by the
name of ned Lud, sometimes referred to as General Lud
or King Lud, who was said to lead their movement
from the legendary Sherwood Forest. That etymology might be apocryphal,

(07:17):
but they had the name. What they didn't have was
a trade union because those were banned at the time.
So the Latites fought back against the corporations the only
way they could by rioting the workers, wrecked automated looms,
burned mills, and even skirmished with the British Army. The
government cracked down was brutal, with some twenty five Latites

(07:40):
tried and executed and another sixty three shipped to Australia.
But the Lattites weren't anti technology. They were pro protecting
their jobs and wages. It wasn't until the nineteen seventies
that the term was used to refer to technophobes. Now
this new definition appears to be here to stay. And finally,

(08:01):
let's talk about Nimrod. These days, it's used as an insult.
If you think someone is being a foolish jerk, you
might say you Nimrod. Nimrod was a person written about
in the Bible, which doesn't paint him as particularly silly.
The story goes that Nimrod was a great grandson of
none other than Noah. A mighty warrior and hunter, he

(08:24):
founded Babylon, the first great empire after the flood. A
rebel and a leader, Nimrod is also credited with constructing
the Tower of Babel, an immense tower with the purpose
of reaching God and destroying him. This is the origin
story of humankind's many languages. A legend has it that
God thwarted the plot by creating multiple languages so that

(08:45):
Nimrod's followers couldn't understand each other and scattered around the world.
So how did Nimrod's name come to mean someone slow witted?
There's no definitive answer, but many people point to Bugs
Bunny of Looney Tunes during the nineteen forties. The theory
goes that Bugs was making fun of the hapless hunter

(09:05):
Elmer Fudd by sarcastically calling him Nimrod of the skilled
hunter of your and the insult stuck and morphed into
what it means today. Today's episode is based on the
article ten historical words that don't mean what you think
on how Stuffworks dot com, written by Melanie Rinzeki McManus.

(09:27):
Brain Stuff is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with
HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. The
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