If the average word nerd received a nickel each time they used a word or phrase that was met with blank stares, many of us would be able to retire early.
While we certainly don't fault those who don't know what "importunate" means or what an "amatorculist" is, we would like those nickels.
Listener Joanne Hsu wrote to us about such a situation.
"I recently used the phrase [sea change] in the context of the sea change in the presidential race (with Harris replacing Biden, etc.), and to my great surprise, my research assistant told me she had to Google it."
Don't judge though, because Hsu goes on to say, "I've been informally polling friends and acquaintances, and I can discern no pattern on who's familiar with the term — [sea change] does not appear generational, nor related to educational attainment, within or outside academia, etc."
English Professor Anne Curzan agrees with Hsu that there doesn't appear to be a generational divide concerning "sea change," since usage of this term has actually been increasing since the 1970s and 80s, when it started to be used in politics.
However, "sea change" is actually several hundred years older than that. This phrase first appeared around 1610 in Shakespeare's play The Tempest. The character Ariel uses it in Act I, scene ii when he implies, through song, that Ferdinand's father has died in a shipwreck:
"Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange."
Shakespeare used "sea change" to refer to the literal underwater transformation of Ferdinand's father's body — his eyes to pearls, his bones to coral.
Today, a "sea change" can refer to any big change, fast or slow. Language usage commentators aren't thrilled about that generalization. For more on that, listen to the audio above.
