The naming of names

We, who must be free or die that speak the tongue that Shakspeare spake, tend to smile at the French with their Academy to regulate their choice of vocabulary (never mind how few of them take any notice of its rulings). We have nothing comparable in this country. The British Academy, which might prima facie be supposed to have a similar function, has other things to do. Instances of interference with the English language by public bodies are rare; the only one that leaps to mind is the British Standards Institution's policy of encouraging the use of 'flammable' in place of inflammable' to avoid ambiguity, though the French, with more confidence in their own literacy, still manage with 'inflammable', and one does not hear of accidents resulting from this! Nobody outside the British Standards Institution really takes the first syllable of 'inflammable' for a negative, and there is no immediate danger that our motorists will be subjected to toxication tests or that anyone will imagine that a professor's inaugural lecture is delivered when he vacates his chair. And yet there are several components of our language which have been changed at a stroke of the pen, and a foreign pen at that

Ambiguity · Epistemology · Institution · Linguistics · nobody · Nothing · Notice · Political science · Prima facie · Sociology · Spell · Vocabulary · Computer Science · History · Law · linguistics and terminology studies · Philosophy · Psychology