Pejoration
Pejoration
specifically : a historical process by which the semantic and connotative status of a word tends to decline
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it says the term has lost impact, I agree. Doesn;t mean it should be 'retired' but I get the point.
Other words have also lost impact. 'Democracy' comes to mind. I live in a dictatorship that on a daily basis call themselves a Peoples' Democracy, and half the world agrees
Liberalism is another one. From Wikipedia
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law.
It's bizarre to see knee-jerk reactions to something if it is described as "a tennet of liberalism". They will rail against the values of the founding fathers who were, in this sense, liberals. Now I don't care too much arguments of founding principles, but to see these people, who claim the constitution is inspired by God, bash liberalism in the context of governing philosophies is infuriating.
I don't think the wrong use of the word has led to it losing impact, just people are more comfortable using it. A lot of people think genocide is like, the Holocaust, but nobody actually needs to die for something to be genocide. It can refer to the destruction of culture or religion within a specific group as well. Like sending first nation children to residential schools. Even if no one died in that process it was genocide by trying to eliminate the culture.
People are just more comfortable with using the word as it is defined as, rather than just the really treacherous stuff like Nazi Germany and Rwanda.
Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
I like how the C became a copyright symbol.
Congo?
Nope. I'll give you a hint. One of the three main communist dictatorship in Latin America (currently)