Does the lexicographer version of Gresham’s Law exist?
In 19th century, inexhaustible lexicon of the English language gained a couple of new phrases when Scottish economist, Henry Dunning Macleod, coined a rather quaint term as the term’s cocksure claim, for an economical tendency, outlining that “bad money always drives out the good money.” The term is “Gresham Law” which has a nice backstory to it and I suppose it could be less interesting if we skipped this part, therefore let me yank you from the present to take you approximately 500 years back to the Elizabethan era, age of adventure, discovery and vigorous intellectual thinking.
Basically, back in the days, as one would guess, coins were made out of precious metals such as gold and silver symbolising the glorious power of the eternally invincible British Empire, but things started to take a different turn when the father of Elizabeth I, Henry VIII, resorted shoddy and sudden replacement of the 40% of the silver coins with base metals such as iron, copper and so forth in a rescue mission aimed at increasing the government’s income in a way that did not specifically require heavy taxation. Apparently, the quality of the British coinage was quite poor and this created cornucopia of opportunities for the compulsively ambitious opportunists.
Having observed this, astute merchants and locals hoarded the “good money” (intrinsically valuable coins) by using only bad money (intrinsically invaluable coins) to do daily trade transactions. This situation caused the abrupt disappearance of the coins, containing valuable metal, due to the melting. Indubitably, merchants and ordinary subjects were shrewd but they could not hold a candle to Thomas Gresham, from which the law takes its name, that his genius enabled him to come up with one of the most well-observed ideas that good and bad money simply cannot co-exist.
Gresham managed to cajole the witty and clever Queen of the British Empire, Elizabeth I into thinking that people kept the only bad money in circulation while accumulating the good one even though there was no difference at the face value. Hence, the English lexicon gained a couple of phrases thanks to Gresham Law. For example, the face value derives from the value printed on the coin. Despite the fact that at the face value, bad money and good money had the same value but had you been more astute to go deeper into the intrinsic value of the coin, you would stumble upon a virtual gold mine. Currently, this term is used in a slightly different sense but somewhat similar to its origins since people no longer use valuable metals to make money.
Given the fact that I am a linguist, not an economist, I would not wish to fuel the brouhaha over Gresham Law, nevertheless, there happen to be some hobgoblin grammarians suggesting that there is a lexicographical version of Gresham Law, meaning that that “bad connotation of the word always drives out the good one.” At the face value, they may be right and I will give a couple of examples that seems very intriguing to the sexy linguists such as myself, but in a deeper observation anyone with a morsel amount of common sense can and will tell otherwise by promulgating some points backed by the historical knowledge and etymological aptitude.
Coming to the lexicographical form of Gresham law, some mumpsimus mavens who bring nothing other than an excessive amount of trouble give the examples such as silly and sinister. These two words are one of the few instances of words that strayed from their original meaning, somewhat dramatically. As for the silly, (related to sæl “happiness”) originally meant happy, prosperous, now is used as an ambiguous adjective to either depict ignoramus who lacked common sense or judgment, hence foolish and frivolous or a rascal you absolutely adore for their sheer foolishness because it deserves nothing but affectionate pity. When it comes to the sinister, (from Old French senestre “left” opposite of dexter “right”) the word slightly drifted apart from its first innocuous meaning, “to be on the left side” and gained a truly evil outfit which we the people use as “unlucky, unfavorable and inauspicious.”
But it does not mean that there is a lexicographical form of Gresham’s law. Usually, the words seem to be polysemic embracing different senses and connotations such as in the example of silly and sinister. A literate reader can easily put 2 + 2 by reading between the lines and this will create a good deal of room for having multiple possible meanings. After all, there is nothing sinister being on the left side unless you happen to be one of those superstitiously religious adherents who have an implausible bias against the left side and there is nothing foolish about being happy unless you are schizophrenically strict utilitarian that considers the mere search for happiness as a foolish activity and waste of precious time of human life.
