Euthanasia

Abstract

"Words, like living creatures, do not last forever and may fall into oblivion or literally disappear. There are, for example, a number of ancient Greek words for which we can barely reconstruct meanings after they have fallen out of use for such a long time (alexiteric, for example, once used as an adjective to describe a preservative or protective agent against contagion, infectious disease, or poison). Some words, such as politically incorrect words which are intended to express racist feelings, may actively be removed from use. These politically incorrect, condemned words tend to disappear almost spontaneously after they have been publicly denigrated; or they may even be removed through legislation (for example, use of any pejorative racial epithet to indicate a “black person”). There are other words that are out of use because their objects of reference have disappeared."