Affordability (original) (raw)

I had much more interesting things to post about, after my adventure at the lawyer’s, endlessly signing my name, dating and locating my signature, and then having it all notarized. But I’m the go-to guy on the Recency Illusion — surely not the first to notice the phenomenon, but I gave it a name and talked it up, so I come with a small but bright aura of Recency fame.

Which brings me to Grifterissimo Grabpussy, who in the past two days has burbled on about becoming aware of the word affordability. Who would have thought that so many Americans would be so deeply concerned about the cost of living?

On the Recency Illusion. The (often inaccurate) belief that a usage you have recently noticed is in fact a recent development in the language. As I put it in my Language Log posting from 8/9/08,”Recency”. Yes, 2008, almost 20 years ago; my grandchild Opal has gone from toddler to college graduate in the interval.

The word affordability. The OED didn’t get around to an entry specifically for this word until 2009 (that certainly counts as recent), glossed as “the quality of being affordable; inexpensiveness”. But with a 1st cite from 1910, in the Indianapolis Star — 115 years ago, surely not recent.

But then affordability_‘s a fully productive derivative noun in –_ity, which could easily have been assembled in 1710 rather than 1910, since the adjective affordable is venerable; the _OED_‘s first cite is from 1647.

The Recency Illusion is a phenomenon of both attention — you have to notice the usage — and experience — most of what you (think you) know about usage comes from the tiny slice of linguistic experiences you’ve had. Grabpussy is, of course, spectacularly inattentive, focusing only on matters he believes to be to his personal advantage. (And separately, feigning ignorance of things he doesn’t want to talk about.)

But yes, he did campaign in 2024 on bringing down the cost of living. On making things affordable. On affordability.

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