In my neck of the universe, and likely in your own, words are prone to losing their meaning.
Take “affordable” as the most recent example of a word I once thought I understood. I looked it up just now to check and found this definition in my go-to online dictionary, Merriam-Webster:
Well OK then. It’s just as I thought, but more vague than I remembered. M-W goes on to define affordable housing as housing that is “not too expensive for people of limited means.”
Again, rather vague. What is “too expensive”? When do means qualify as limited?
Affordable is a relative term that can no longer stand alone and have any real meaning, but the news media and peddlers of sundry goods rarely qualify it as they should.
Take this story about the “wee-Cottages” coming soon to the southeast part of Longmont, Colorado. As if the hyphen and mysterious capitalization weren’t unreal enough, the story says these no-doubt-cute little places will be listed in the low-$300,000s. Presumably they are all at least temporarily affordable, because 27 of the 102 wee dwellings will be permanently affordable in the low- to mid-$200,000s.
Permanently? Nothing is permanent.
This is what affordable actually means in our little piece of Boulder County:
able to be afforded by some people but not by many whose means are actually limited
If a guy tells you something is “affordable,” ask him to complete the sentence.
The Smith Compound 