- Used to be that an idea was called "simplistic" if it simplified something to the point of being reductive, if it distorted something in the process of trying to express it simply, or if someone had accepted a far-too-simple understanding as adequate when it was not. Calling something simplistic was a negative judgment, not a neutral description. Calling your friend's idea simplistic was an insult.#
- Nowadays people use that word to mean simple or really simple. In today's USA Today Network article about choosing plants in a time of climate change, Sarah Bowman writes, "Planting a tree may seem simplistic, but there is a lot that goes into picking the right one . . . ."#
- In earlier times, when newspapers had more substantial editing in place, and when the meaning of the word had not yet become blurred by language change, someone in the newsroom would have crossed out simplistic and replaced it with simple. Planting a tree may seem simple. But language change is usually irreversible, and there will be no going back. The two words are now synonyms of the blander (but useful) word simple. The concept once carried by the more critical of the two words, simplistic, can no longer be expressed in American English by a single word.#
- There's a phrase in the opening lines of Beowulf, the epic poem from a thousand years ago, that is mostly made up of words that have been entirely lost from the English language. Spoken aloud, it sounds roughly like this: "hoo the athelingas ellen fremedon." It probably meant, roughly, "...how the nobles their mighty deeds had performed." So Ellen was a pretty special word in English a thousand years ago, but exactly what it meant to the folks in the feasting hall is likely out of our grasp. Something in the neighborhood of mightily or mighty deeds, but what was mighty to them?#
- The materials of culture and meaning, expressed in artifacts and woven into the brain pathways of living people, are profoundly transient.#
- Used to be that an idea was called "simplistic" if it simplified something to the point of being reductive, if it distorted something in the process of trying to express it simply, or if someone had accepted a far-too-simple understanding as adequate when it was not. Calling something simplistic was a negative judgment, not a neutral description. Calling your friend's idea simplistic was an insult.#
- Nowadays people use that word to mean simple or really simple. In today's USA Today Network article about choosing plants in a time of climate change, Sarah Bowman writes, "Planting a tree may seem simplistic, but there is a lot that goes into picking the right one . . . ."#
- In earlier times, when newspapers had more substantial editing in place, and when the meaning of the word had not yet become blurred by language change, someone in the newsroom would have crossed out simplistic and replaced it with simple. Planting a tree may seem simple. But language change is usually irreversible, and there will be no going back. The two words are now synonyms of the blander (but useful) word simple. The concept once carried by the more critical of the two words, simplistic, can no longer be expressed in American English by a single word.#
- There's a phrase in the opening lines of Beowulf, the epic poem from a thousand years ago, that is mostly made up of words that have been entirely lost from the English language. Spoken aloud, it sounds roughly like this: "hoo the athelingas ellen fremedon." It probably meant, roughly, "...how the nobles their mighty deeds had performed." So Ellen was a pretty special word in English a thousand years ago, but exactly what it meant to the folks in the feasting hall is likely out of our grasp. Something in the neighborhood of mightily or mighty deeds, but what was mighty to them?#
- The materials of culture and meaning, expressed in artifacts and woven into the brain pathways of living people, are profoundly transient.#