When disconnect becomes a noun

THE EDITOR: I refer to the article “Do You Know” by Undine Giuseppi in Sundays Newsday 17/10/04 pg 11. I quote: A highly respected politician has just used the word “Disconnect” - a verb, a doing word - as though it were a noun, the name of something. From time to time  Language changes, and I usually try to keep abreast of such changes, will someone knowledgeable on the subject of English let me know whether such a change has been approved - end of quote.

The idea that “from time to time language changes” no longer applies. Today we are in the midst of an information “explosion” TV, the movies, computers (via the internet) newspapers, weekly news-magazines and journals throw a mass of information at us. We receive more information in one day than people say, a hundred years ago, received in a year or even in a lifetime. Definition - Collins English Dictionary — “Disconnect vb (tr) to break or undo the connection of or between (something, such as a plug and a socket) Definition — Microsoft press computer dictionary 3rd edition: “Disconnect” vb — to break a communications link. “To disconnect” is a verb but in computerese or military jargon when a power outage or computer glitch or a switch off causes a break in communication’s link it is a “disconnect” — a noun (we have a disconnect).

The computer world, the military world, the medical world, the sporting world, the political world, and I suppose the world of all activities are all caught up in the information “revolution” where new words are being coined and old words are being discarded or given new meaning and new jobs to do. Today there is no group of persons nor academies of standard English to approve or disapprove the use of a word. Each discipline, each activity coins its new words and these specialised words appear in computer dictionaries, military hand books, medical dictionaries etc. We are being overwhelmed by a never ending flood of words, words, words.

However when a word catches the popular imagination and enters everyday language and is used on a regular basis over a period of five years or more it is included in upcoming English Language dictionaries and becomes respectable although it may come under the heading of “jargon.” Also with the advent of “the global village,” world wide travel, and the mass media including the internet, foreign language words are flooding into the English Language at a tremendous rate and the same goes for other languages. Note in France, as a small example, “le jazz” and “le hot dog.”

JACK LEARMOND CRIQUI
Diego Martin