WORD PEJORATION

       My mom, born in 1924 during World War II, sat with me on her front porch swing one balmy spring day last year. Out of the blue she quipped, "We had such gay times when we danced."
        
     What? Did she just say what I thought she said? Surely not. She was a straight as all get out.
        
      It was clearly a good time to tell her how language evolves. But word pejoration didn’t seem like a topic I should discuss with my mother. And I was not about to get into a linguistic oration about the Great Vowel Shift or the fact that Shakespeare spoke Modern English as opposed to Chaucer’s Middle English. So I decided to talk about how familiar words have changed meaning over the years.
  
Me: “Mom, what does hanky mean?”
  
Mom: “As in ‘hanky panky?’’
  
This was not going well.
  
Mom: “What’s the meaning of expletive?”
  
Me: “Bad word.”
  
Did she just steal my lesson?
  
Mom: “It means to fill out. Ex means out. The other part means to fill."
  
Mom: “What’s the meaning of harlot?”
  
Me: “No one you or I know.”
  
Mom: “Originally, it meant rascal.”
  
Me: “I didn’t know that.”
  
Mom: “Do you know the origin of idiot?”
  
Me: “Uh, no. but I think it means someone really stupid.”
  
Mom: “It originally meant a person who is not a clergyman, a layman."
  
Me: “Mom, how do you know all this?”
  
Mom: "I watch EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND.”

...Whew. All that in one little conversation. And I read Mencken's American Language.