The Fading Nature Of The English Language, Volume 1

The world is always changing. Sometimes things change for the better, and sometimes they change for the worse. I therefore acknowledge (and appreciate) that some things are changing for the better.

Yet the way we in the Western World use the English language is unquestionably changing for the worse. Here is one example....

PHRASE: "You are transparent."

OLDER DEFINITION (up to about a decade ago): You are attempting to hide some bit of information from me, but you're not doing a good job of it. It's as though you have whatever you are hiding in one of your hands, and that hand is behind your back as you face me. Yet because you're like a transparent object, I can see right through you to whatever you are hiding. You clearly need to work on concealment strategies.

ANALYSIS: I find this use of the term multi-layered and interesting. The metaphor hangs together well.

NEWER DEFINITION (the last decade or so; I blame Tony Blair, amongst others, for this definition): You have nothing to hide; therefore, like a transparent object, nothing clouds one's ability to see clearly through you.

ANALYSIS: Booooooooring. This definition lacks any interesting layers, and in doing so its message is actually quite muddled. Shouldn't we appreciate people who display genuine substance and gravitas? So why would being "transparent" (which suggests a certain lack of substance) be considered a good thing? (It conjures up images of an empty inner life, amongst other things.)

Also, it seems creepily invasive in the sense that the person being "transparent" wants to be metaphorically X-rayed in order to be proven "clean" and therefore "true." (This suggests shades of Orwell's 1984, amongst other things.) It would seem to me that one wouldn't want to be examined like that, literally or metaphorically.

If you want to be seen as an honest person, drop the eerie, new-wave definition of "transparent" and just say, "I'm being open and honest with you...."