Timeline for Difference in meaning between “elderly” and "old"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
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| Jun 15, 2020 at 7:40 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| Mar 19, 2020 at 20:13 | comment | added | rajah9 | Cole says: "I'm vaguely hostile to the word elderly." In his title, he uses "Old Man" and "Elder," which one can assume he is not vaguely hostile toward. Doesn't seem weird to me, but rather consistent with more negative associations with elderly and fewer with old or older. | |
| Mar 19, 2020 at 18:12 | comment | added | JMac | Is Thomas Cole trying to be negative towards the "elders" in his book title? It seems weird to me to title your book "Old Man Country: My Search for Meaning Among Elders" and then say you're hostile towards the word elderly... | |
| Mar 19, 2020 at 12:55 | comment | added | Mitch | @rajah9 That's not how words work. Words as humans use them are not logical entities (or at least not stipulated mathematical substitutable single meaning entities). Each repeated utterance has its own associations. Surely 'old' and 'older' overlap in many more ways than either do with 'elderly' (for multiple reasons), but their implications and connotations can be very different. 'Old' is abrupt. 'Older' is relative and vague and therefore much less extreme than 'old'. | |
| Mar 19, 2020 at 12:22 | comment | added | rajah9 | @Mitch I hope that you would be able to extend the notion of older to encompass old. If not, perhaps you might see that Mr. Cole, who shuns the word elderly, preferred old in the title of his book. | |
| S Mar 19, 2020 at 8:52 | history | suggested | V2Blast | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added WSJ link; removed unnecessary edit note
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| Mar 19, 2020 at 7:12 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Mar 19, 2020 at 8:52 | |||||
| Mar 18, 2020 at 21:39 | comment | added | Mitch | @AvrohomYitzchok Sure, but this answer doesn't provide evidence about the word 'old' only about 'older'. My own feeling is that 'older' is less negative than 'elderly' but 'old' by itself is probably more negative than 'elderly'. | |
| Mar 18, 2020 at 21:32 | history | edited | rajah9 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added a clearer contrast between the words in question
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| Mar 18, 2020 at 21:09 | comment | added | Avrohom Yitzchok | I beg your pardon, but the OP (=me) writes at the end of his question, "Is there more of a negative association to the word “elderly” than to the word "old"? " . | |
| Mar 18, 2020 at 15:35 | comment | added | jsw29 | The OP is not asking whether the word elderly can carry some negative associations, but whether it carries more of them than old. | |
| Mar 18, 2020 at 15:05 | history | answered | rajah9 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |