Words that are now meaningless

An academic has labelled the 10% increase in health funding as “austerity”. This made me realises that this was another word which once had a specific meaning, basically a cut in the level of spending, to a meaningless “spending did not increase as much as I think it should have”.

I asked on Twitter for examples of other words that once had a useful specific meaning, but now were meaningless. Some of the contributions were:

1. Neoliberal – any non-socialist economic policy
2. Austerity – not increasing spending as much as we want
3. Racist – has a different view to me on the Treaty
4. Far right – not left
5. Nazi – see far right
6. Disinformation – information I disagree with
7. Hate speech – speech I dislike
8. Unsafe – speech or views I dislike
9. Genocide – death of more than 1 person
10. Cut – lower increase in spending of taxpayer funds than demanded by self-appointed advocates
11. Anti-fascist: Anarchist
12. Diversity – Homogenous opinion
13. Science – knowledge
14. Unprecedented – not occurred recently
15. Gaslighting- saying things I don’t like to hear
16. Privileged – wrong race or gender