0

Are there examples of non-gradable adjectives that, over time, have come to be used as gradable?

For example, has a word commonly accepted as non-gradable (like binary in "It's a binary choice" [example suggested by @JasonBassford]) ever transitioned to being commonly accepted as measurable in degrees?

An example of what this might look like:

There seem to be competing definitions for anonymization, and therefore anonymized. It seems the non-gradable definition is prevalent, and I wonder if that might change in the future.

One definition asserts that anonymized data is, by definition, irreversibly anonymized:

Anonymization: The act of permanently and completely removing personal identifiers from data, such as converting personally identifiable information into aggregated data... Once this data is stripped of personally identifying elements, those elements can never be re-associated with the data or the underlying individual.

— Educause, emphasis mine

Another definition seems to allow for the possibility of incomplete anonymization:

Anonymization: The process in which individually identifiable data is altered in such a way that it no longer can be related back to a given individual. Among many techniques, there are three primary ways that data is anonymized... Note that all of these processes will not guarantee that data is no longer identifiable and have to be performed in such a way that does not harm the usability of the data.

— IAPP, emphasis mine

Under the former definition, anonymized would seem to be a non-gradable adjective (that is, data is either anonymized or not-anonymized, with no degrees of anonymization in between).

Under the latter definition, anonymized would seem to be a minimum-standard absolute gradable adjective (that is, anonymized data possesses a non-zero degree of anonymization).

Update:

@CWill aptly pointed out that the second definition doesn't necessarily mean anonymized is gradable, because an incomplete anonymization process may not result in data which may be described as anonymized.

However, I've found uses of anonymized which necessitate its measurement in degrees rather than two categories. For example:

A piece of text is under-anonymized if identifying information (such as names and locations) are only partially removed or replaced in a way that the described individuals can still be re-identified in a given document.

— What does it mean to anonymize text?

crenshaw-dev
  • 582
  • I believe the two definitions are still the same, just that one definition defines the "act" of anonymization, while the other describes the "process" of taking that action. For example, you could say, "Her baking skill is top notch." and it is discrete and non-gradable. Or, you could say, "She's been on a ferocious baking kick for a month and I've gained at least 40 lbs because of it." and that would allow degrees. – CWill May 12 '20 at 22:22
  • @CWill interesting... I guess I’m extrapolating a definition of anonymized, which allows for something to be partially anonymized, from the second definition. That extrapolation might not be justified. – crenshaw-dev May 12 '20 at 22:26
  • I reject the definition that just because something is made anonymous that situation is necessarily permanent. The only way that could be conceivable would be if every person in the world with previous identifying knowledge in their head were to die (or otherwise be made to forget), as well as anything else that could provide any kind of historical forensics. – Jason Bassford May 12 '20 at 23:14
  • @JasonBassford I reject it too. That's why I'm hoping there are examples of definitions that have transitioned from a yes/no question (as with the EDUCAUSE definition) to a matter of degrees (as, perhaps, with the IAPP definition). – crenshaw-dev May 12 '20 at 23:17
  • So, why don't you use an example of an adjective that is clearly non-gradable, such as this: It's a binary* choice.* Then, ask if an adjective of that usage type has ever changed in meaning from such a non-gradable use into something that can be graded? I'm not criticizing the question itself, just the somewhat confusing example you picked. – Jason Bassford May 12 '20 at 23:27
  • @JasonBassford examples of non-gradable adjectives are readily available. My hope was to provide an example of a word that could go either way, to help convince the reader that such a transition might be possible and hopefully spark memories of similar words. – crenshaw-dev May 12 '20 at 23:29
  • @MichaelCrenshaw My point is that you picked as your non-gradable example something that significantly detracts from what you're trying to accomplish. As pointed out, your example is of dubious value as something gradable. Pick an example that's clear and to the point. Then speculate on the existence of something you don't know about in order to see if anybody else does. In short, you're not helping yourself by picking anonymization. – Jason Bassford May 12 '20 at 23:32
  • @JasonBassford I don't think anonymized is of dubious valuable as something gradable, as evidenced by its gradable use in an article detailing the process of anonymization of text. But I've added your example to hopefully illustrate what I'm after. – crenshaw-dev May 12 '20 at 23:36
  • https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=more+anonymous%2Cmost+anonymous&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmore%20anonymous%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cmost%20anonymous%3B%2Cc0 – Hot Licks May 13 '20 at 00:21
  • 1
    @MichaelCrenshaw My last comment had a typo. I'd meant to type that it's of dubious value as something non-gradable. Sorry about that. The addition of binary to the question helps. – Jason Bassford May 13 '20 at 00:22
  • https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=almost+binary&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Calmost%20binary%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Calmost%20binary%3B%2Cc0 – Hot Licks May 13 '20 at 00:29
  • Note that all of these processes will not guarantee that data is no longer identifiable should be either *none of these processes guarantees that . . .” or “all of these processes fail to guarantee that . . .” – Xanne May 13 '20 at 07:12
  • 1
    Something can be true, or it can be false. Nongradable. But then again, truer words were never spoken. Gradable. – Tinfoil Hat May 14 '20 at 02:31
  • The first definition you give is from IAPP's Glossary of Privacy Terms. It is a specifying definition, and in fact the article points out that tinkering with terms is in play. Specifying definitions are given when conflicting terminologies exist and there is a perceived need for clarification (usually in legal or scientific contexts). I'd say that this isn't a suitable choice of example for ELU. Anyone needing to determine which sense of 'anonymise' is being used in a particular case will need to check in a dedicated glossary. – Edwin Ashworth May 21 '20 at 15:24
  • This essentially asks for lists. I'll not add an 'answer', but this Google 2-gram strongly suggests that 'pregnant' is one such example ('heavily pregnant' seems not to appear until about 1850). // Closely related: Are the rules regarding absolute modifiers too absolute{!}? – Edwin Ashworth May 21 '20 at 15:30
  • 1
    @EdwinAshworth I'm somewhat asserting that common usage of anonymize is non-gradable and that there is a competing, less-common gradable usage. I agree, it's not a great example. The examples of pregnant and infinite are both much clearer examples. Unfortunately I didn't think of them at the time of the question. :-) Thanks for your addition! – crenshaw-dev May 21 '20 at 15:32
  • Common usage!? I'd say, from their example sentences, that AHD and Collins don't agree on which the default sense in normal usage is. – Edwin Ashworth May 21 '20 at 15:37
  • @EdwinAshworth by "common usage," I guess I'm thinking of the slew of new articles in the vein, "'Anonymized' Data Used to find out Where Lady Gaga ate Lunch," where the author/readers clearly expect anonymized to mean irreversibly anonymized. Maybe my sample is biased. – crenshaw-dev May 21 '20 at 15:42
  • I can't find that quote. But if the word anonymyzed actually occurred in scare-quotes in certain tabloids, the term standard usage wouldn't be high on my connotations list. – Edwin Ashworth May 21 '20 at 16:18

2 Answers2

1

Okay, I'll give it a try. How about dead, as deprived of life, no longer alive (M-W)? Commonly accepted as either YES or NO, but we also have almost dead, half dead, etc. The dog is dead; the dog is not dead, the dog is almost dead; the dog is half dead; etc. I must be missing something. And then there's Schrodinger's cat, which is simultaneously dead and not dead. That may not make dead fully gradable, but it does create a grade different from dead and not dead, i.e., both.

Richard Kayser
  • 18,028
1

Are there examples of non-gradable adjectives that, over time, have come to be used as gradable?

Yes. The adjective “infinite”.

Prior to 1891 “infinite” was ungradeable, in that year Georg Cantor’s paper was published which demonstrated that there are infinite Natural numbers but there are more Real numbers. Thus the paper showed that there were sets of infinities whose cardinalities were of different sizes. “Infinite” then became technically gradeable.

Greybeard
  • 41,737
  • This is exactly the kind of example I was looking for. It's a technical term that made a clear transition in meaning from non-gradable to gradable. Thanks! – crenshaw-dev May 21 '20 at 15:13
  • I don’t see how this follows. Different infinities all have the quality of being infinite; I don’t think it is necessarily the case that we must be able to say that an infinity of greater cardinality is “more infinite” than another. They’re both infinite, as in “not finite”. – herisson May 21 '20 at 16:32