I think languages change in a sense absolutely; the fact that 'breakfast'
meant 'breaking fast' etc. is probably far more irrelevant than we'd like
to believe.
happy birthday alan
this caught my eye. i see the opposite assumption grounding many things and i get suspicious. i'm thinking of work in the vein of heidegger -- say agamben (who i don't dislike exactly, but...) he often begins any inquiry by tracing a word back to its very earliest roots and then building his critique or whatever from that meaning back to where we are. but as you say of breakfast the older meaning seems wholly eclipsed/occluded. the word "gay" seems poised to lose its older meanings entirely as well.
jlo
