"skunked term" meaning in English

See skunked term in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: skunked terms [plural]
Etymology: Coined by lexicographer Bryan A. Garner, and since adopted by some other style guides. Head templates: {{en-noun}} skunked term (plural skunked terms)
  1. A word that becomes difficult to use because it is transitioning from one meaning to another. Purists may insist on the old usage, while descriptivists are more open to newer usages. Wikipedia link: skunked term
    Sense id: en-skunked_term-en-noun-3hdNCMSh Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for skunked term meaning in English (1.2kB)

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  "etymology_text": "Coined by lexicographer Bryan A. Garner, and since adopted by some other style guides.",
  "forms": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2000, Bryan A. Garner, “lady”, in The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style, page 206",
          "text": "It isn't a skunked term, but it's gradually becoming something like one.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
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      "glosses": [
        "A word that becomes difficult to use because it is transitioning from one meaning to another. Purists may insist on the old usage, while descriptivists are more open to newer usages."
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      "id": "en-skunked_term-en-noun-3hdNCMSh",
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{
  "etymology_text": "Coined by lexicographer Bryan A. Garner, and since adopted by some other style guides.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "skunked terms",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
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      "expansion": "skunked term (plural skunked terms)",
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.