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English was my first language and still is my only language. The vast majority of understanding I have of the meanings of words simply comes from hearing the words in context. This is probably very normal, as most of us didn't learn our first language from reading the dictionary but from hearing the people around us talk. As such I often feel like I don't really know the precise meaning of words I use, only having a vague understanding, enough to use in conversation perhaps.
I recognise there is a lot of power behind words, characters and symbols. Every now and then I come across a situation where I'm prompted to double check the dictionary for a meaning of a word, and I'm often surprised to find I'm either slightly inaccurate or I find an alternate meaning I wasn't aware of.
I'm creating this thread for the purposes of contacting the experts within this community with regard to the English language. Feel free to hijack with your own similar questions, within the realm of the English language.
I recently was prompted to fully understand the meaning/s of 'superficial,' as it came up in a book "on the surface as opposed to being superficial" (loose quote there). I thought they were one in the same thing, or close enough anyway. It turns out that there is another meaning for superficial, which I think the author was hinting at. Googled (the most credible dictionary I'm sure), the word comes up with 4 meanings:
+ Show Spoiler +superficial
ˌsuːpəˈfɪʃ(ə)l,ˌsjuː-/Submit
adjective
adjective: superficial
1. existing or occurring at or on the surface.
"the building suffered only superficial damage"
synonyms: surface, exterior, external, outer, outside, outermost, peripheral, slight More
antonyms: deep, thorough
situated or occurring on the skin or immediately beneath it.
"the superficial muscle groups"
2. appearing to be true or real only until examined more closely.
"the resemblance between the breeds is superficial"
synonyms: apparent, specious, seeming, outward, ostensible, cosmetic, slight More
antonyms: genuine, authentic
3. not thorough, deep, or complete; cursory.
"he had only the most superficial knowledge of foreign countries"
synonyms: cursory, perfunctory, casual, sketchy, desultory, unconsidered, token, slapdash, slipshod, offhand, inadequate, imperfect, slight; More
antonyms: thorough, comprehensive
lacking depth of character or understanding.
"perhaps I was a superficial person"
synonyms: shallow, surface, on the surface, skin-deep, minimal, artificial; More
antonyms: deep, significant, thoughtful
4. BUILDINGBRIT. denoting a quantity of a material expressed in terms of area covered rather than linear dimension or volume.
I really feel the author was hinting at the second definition found here, or perhaps the third, but I'm leaning towards more the second. Google shows a root latin word being 'superficies' which has the translation of 'above face' and again referred to the surface of an object or perhaps to assets residing on land (such as buildings).
My question is: when did 'superficial' gain this alternate/new meaning of superficiality being not genuine or a false impression? The timing is actually quite important because the book I'm reading is a little bit old (not old by books standards but certainly before my father was born).
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The word dates back to the 15th century when it was introduced into Middle English. As for when it picked up the connotation...I don't know. As with all living languages, words (and grammar) evolve with use. Given the definitions though, I would suspect it was relatively early. It only seems like a vastly different meaning when viewed under the synonyms and antonyms which are more categorically helpful than semantically useful. Lexicons generally listen definitions of words based on the more common usage of the word as well which to me indicates further that the second definition was relatively early.
Edit: I'm interested to see how this tread works out, so I'll ask a question now. In MURICA we don't use the 'to do' verb the same way that UK folk do ("Is he going to drop a stargate?" "He might do."). We would generally answer "He might," or use a demonstrative with it ("He might do that"). Any UK English speakers care to clue me in as to how this is taught grammatically (i.e. why is it right to say it like that)?
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Baa?21244 Posts
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Hey there,
I'm a language person, a senior in a comp lit program, so not exactly an academic, but I know my way around language. I see you found that on the oxford site, they're good, but I personally prefer other sources, especially Wiktionary. Oxford tends to be a little superficial.
Here are some links:
+ Show Spoiler +
We could figure out the definition they were trying to use better with the quote, if that's possible. Other things would be: what's the date of publ., author, etc? I imagine it has something to do with a character appearing one way on the surface, and having a different personage on the inside. Or something like that, you know.
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Would you be able to provide the exact quote and reference please? The context would help also.
My research is rooted in cognitive linguistics, I specialise in visual communication and narrative macro frames in comics. I'd be happy to answer any questions in the area.
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The lack of a proper context (paragraph, sentence or even a phrase) contrasts with your long write-up and apparent seriousness and curiosity............ -___________-
On a related note, when you learn German and French you'll understand English and the etymology of its words a lot more and how the meanings of the words change according to history. I know I myself was fascinated by seeing how the meanings changed :D
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you're lucky to have english as your first language, it saves you from the inconvenience of having to learn it. I want to learn other languages but I feel like I should just improve my english instead lol
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Maybe it's just an educated guess, but isn't it obvious that it was used as a metaphor, people liked how it sounded, and it became common?
There's four definitions, but they're all describing the same thing.
Deep and shallow have literal meanings, but they can also describe a person's thoughts. Superficial in that way is just a synonym for shallow. Why do we associate frivolity with shallowness? Well maybe because it doesn't take a very long time to do something frivolous, so you don't have to go very deep. Ever dig a hole? It can be a lot of work if you dig it deep.
Another thought is that we want people to understand who we are inside, we want people with complex thoughts and ideas. The face is literally superficial, but it's also figuratively superficial in that it doesn't necessarily show our true emotions.
Things like this all contribute to a word being used this way. It's not any single event or cause, words just slowly evolve from the way we use them. If we don't know a word for something or don't have an easy way to describe something, sometimes we go for using a word we already know in clever way. What's the word for someone coming into an environment and getting everyone's attention? I don't know, but 'big splash' works pretty good even if there's no water ;p
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You may be interested in the work of linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure. His course in general linguistics is an interesting take on the meaning of words/symbols and how they work, and he has influenced continental philosophy enough to gain my attention.
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Looks like he's saying something is important despite it being only a first 'layer' of a problem/idea.
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Context as always is important.
"on the surface as opposed to being superficial"
What is on the surface as opposed to being superficial?
It sounds like there is a concept being examined, which has been described simply or in brief manner.
The author is warning you that only the concept being examined is more complex than than it first seems.
Seriously though, you write all this magniloquent crap, and you can't be bothered with context so your "mysterious phrase" cannot be answered? WTF?
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Looks like a promising thread. I'll hop on.
I second what others have said, could we have a bit more context?
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My question is: when did 'superficial' gain this alternate/new meaning of superficiality being not genuine or a false impression? The timing is actually quite important because the book I'm reading is a little bit old (not old by books standards but certainly before my father was born).
To answer your questions OP, superficial gained this meaning around about the end of the 16th/turn of the 17th Century in English:
Etymology: < (i) Middle French superficial, Middle French, French superficiel located at or on the surface (1314 in Old French, earliest in a medical context), consisting of or measured in two dimensions (late 14th cent., earliest in figure superficielle ), not detailed or complete, cursory (late 14th cent.), (of a person) lacking depth of character or understanding (1590 in Montaigne).
And in post-classical Latin early-mid 12th Century 'trivial, lacking depth'.
Source: OED
OP, how about your actually return to the thread you started nearly a week ago?
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Ah, good old homework threads. A superficial and vague background story but OP asking for specific information.
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On December 11 2013 07:25 Chef wrote:
Maybe it's just an educated guess, but isn't it obvious that it was used as a metaphor, people liked how it sounded, and it became common?
it's a common process. words tend to begin with concrete meanings in that they are associated with actual objects or states. those objects or states come to stand in for concepts with which we note some kind of contiguous relationship. at their base, concepts are metaphors
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On December 05 2013 06:22 Foblos wrote:
Edit: I'm interested to see how this tread works out, so I'll ask a question now. In MURICA we don't use the 'to do' verb the same way that UK folk do ("Is he going to drop a stargate?" "He might do."). We would generally answer "He might," or use a demonstrative with it ("He might do that"). Any UK English speakers care to clue me in as to how this is taught grammatically (i.e. why is it right to say it like that)?
I would assume it's because the answer "He might" is a sentence fragment as it has no verb. He might do is probably a result of having it enforced from an early age sentences need verbs to be complete. It's also possible it's a dialect divergence with the push to compress American language and spelling in the early 20th Century.
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On December 05 2013 06:22 Foblos wrote:
Edit: I'm interested to see how this tread works out, so I'll ask a question now. In MURICA we don't use the 'to do' verb the same way that UK folk do ("Is he going to drop a stargate?" "He might do."). We would generally answer "He might," or use a demonstrative with it ("He might do that"). Any UK English speakers care to clue me in as to how this is taught grammatically (i.e. why is it right to say it like that)?
There's a similar thing I noticed in England. They would say things like "I haven't any idea", instead of "I don't have any idea.". Not sure if it's just an alternate form or if some people always use it this way.
In general England and the rest of the UK seems more experimental in how they use the language. But that might just be observation bias from my part.
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On December 11 2013 21:08 hypercube wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2013 06:22 Foblos wrote:
Edit: I'm interested to see how this tread works out, so I'll ask a question now. In MURICA we don't use the 'to do' verb the same way that UK folk do ("Is he going to drop a stargate?" "He might do."). We would generally answer "He might," or use a demonstrative with it ("He might do that"). Any UK English speakers care to clue me in as to how this is taught grammatically (i.e. why is it right to say it like that)? There's a similar thing I noticed in England. They would say things like "I haven't any idea", instead of "I don't have any idea.". Not sure if it's just an alternate form or if some people always use it this way. In general England and the rest of the UK seems more experimental in how they use the language. But that might just be observation bias from my part.
These kinds of phenomena aren't necessarily related to British or American English. Usually this is a written vs. spoken language issue, related to the level of formality or related to some social variants. Some nice compilations as to how Brits and Americans use language can be found in Webcorpora like COHA link, COCA link and BNC. link
You can pretty much look up any word and check how frequently it occurs... or in which context. Very helpful for the cunning linguist.
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Superficial comes from the latin word superficialis.
Super meaning "above" or "beyond"
facies meaning "face".
It was used in french language as "superficiel" since at least the begining of the 14th century.
It was meant to mean "something that is on the surface"
and later would also mean "something that isn't deep" (used for both physical or abstract objects)
The second meaning the OP is refering to, doesn't appear in french dictionnary even though it makes sense and could be written. I think it's because the first and second (and even the third) meanings are the same, but with slightly more abstraction to it.
The second meaning in the OP (superficial = appearing to be true or real only until examined more closely)
seem to accord with the others meaning;
If we take the exemple, "the resemblance between the breeds is superficial".
It means the ressemblance is not very deep, it's only a ressemblance from the surface, on the first look.
I don't know if it helps but I also love words. I like to look at the origins of the words (mostly latin and greek), it's always fascinating to see from where we started to where we ended in terms of meaning.
I hope my comment wasn't too superficial :D
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EPT
