Patronage...
Time for some meandering. I had this thought while I was walking to the bathroom.
It started out by me thinking that my Gunslinger Girl T-Shirt, originally bought as a XL, is now more of a L. So I decided that I should probably buy either a new one, or just some more anime-themed T-shirts in general, and I should probably patronize Animenation because I've never been done wrong by them yet although their prices aren't always the best. Then I thought...patronize? That's not the right word. But it IS the right word, just with two meanings.
In the sense I used it in my head, it just means to financially or otherwise support a person or company or whatever. But it also has another connotation, which is to look down on someone and try to correct them, as though they were a child. Both meanings are valid: patronize is the verb form of patron, which comes from the Latin pater or "father". In the first sense, it's like being a dad to someone; taking care of their financial and other needs and enjoying the work they do. In the other sense, it's also like a dad; criticizing and belittling any accomplishment made by the person and taking almost smug satisfaction in it. Obviously, the people who had the idea for the first meaning, which is the older meaning, liked their fathers. The people with the current day meaning, not so much. This led me to wonder if it might be a part of the feminist movement's goal to subtly undermine men, or perhaps it was a sign of the shifting of the traditional nuclear family and the standards of the father being the 'breadwinner' and 'bringing home the bacon' to a less glowing look at the pater familias.
Then I realized that I'm in the middle of the damn desert walking to a portable toilet thinking about the implications of a connotation shift of a word I rarely ever use in conversation. Man, I'm bored. :)
It started out by me thinking that my Gunslinger Girl T-Shirt, originally bought as a XL, is now more of a L. So I decided that I should probably buy either a new one, or just some more anime-themed T-shirts in general, and I should probably patronize Animenation because I've never been done wrong by them yet although their prices aren't always the best. Then I thought...patronize? That's not the right word. But it IS the right word, just with two meanings.
In the sense I used it in my head, it just means to financially or otherwise support a person or company or whatever. But it also has another connotation, which is to look down on someone and try to correct them, as though they were a child. Both meanings are valid: patronize is the verb form of patron, which comes from the Latin pater or "father". In the first sense, it's like being a dad to someone; taking care of their financial and other needs and enjoying the work they do. In the other sense, it's also like a dad; criticizing and belittling any accomplishment made by the person and taking almost smug satisfaction in it. Obviously, the people who had the idea for the first meaning, which is the older meaning, liked their fathers. The people with the current day meaning, not so much. This led me to wonder if it might be a part of the feminist movement's goal to subtly undermine men, or perhaps it was a sign of the shifting of the traditional nuclear family and the standards of the father being the 'breadwinner' and 'bringing home the bacon' to a less glowing look at the pater familias.
Then I realized that I'm in the middle of the damn desert walking to a portable toilet thinking about the implications of a connotation shift of a word I rarely ever use in conversation. Man, I'm bored. :)