How Words Lose Their Power

by Patrick Appel

Robin Hanson explores over-used language:

Many words, like “excellent”, “genius”, “rude”, or “tyrant” have ambiguous borderlines, so that it isn’t clear to what cases the concepts do or don’t apply. In such borderline cases, we should expect people to choose their words strategically, to make they and their allies look good, and to make their rivals look bad. That is, we expect people to try be especially generous and loose in order to let themselves apply positive words to themselves or their allies, but to be specially strict and stingy in order to avoid applying such words to their rivals.

Hanson theorizes that the meanings of positive words broaden their meanings faster, because we talk more about ourselves and our allies than we talk about our rivals.