(Today, my caution about a word sometimes used to describe older adults who are having more than a little trouble figuring things out.)
In some lexicons, individuals—some of them older adults—can be described as addled, usually taken to mean something like dazed, confused, befuddled, disorganized or worse. (Intoxicated is listed as another synonym.) Like other words sometimes attached to seniorhood, addled seems innocent enough—just another word to describe a specific feature of cognitive or affective loss. Just another way to name brain power that’s diminishing.
The etymological derivation of addled suggests otherwise. To be direct: this is not a good word to describe anything except a completely useless egg, and definitely not to designate the features of a human brain, older or not.
This term—in its verb and adjectival forms—occurs in a variety of European linguistic trees: Frisian, Old English, East Frisian, Old Swedish, Dutch, Middle Low German. Each of these word families stays close to the original Latinate and Greek usage: “urine egg”—an egg that has not hatched and hence has putrefied.
The rotten egg of ancient times morphed during the 1600’s, when the term added a figurative extension closer to “empty”. By the late 1700’s, the Greek terminology had formed itself around “muddled”, “unsound” and “confused.” Although the original meaning remains primary in current dictionaries, common usage may have collected more around the concepts of underwhelming intellectual abilities.
I’m not usually bothered by the evolution of words from their original meaning(s) into their current usage. But in this case, especially if the word is attached to the cognitive health of people in their later years, I’m not so accepting. The idea that our brains are like urine-soaked chicken eggs, and therefore not completely hatched? That feels like a descriptor hiding an insult. None of us likes to be insulted, etymologically or otherwise.
So there you go: Another FullofYears vocabulary caveat. Use it well, okay…?
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