Is the word 'hate' misused?

[IOwnTheSpire]

I see a lot of people use the word 'hate' nowadays when referring to media (movies, games, etc.) and I feel that it's rather misused. I think there's a line between not liking something, disliking something, and outright hating something.

The way I see it, hate is a strong word, and strong words shouldn't be tossed around too casually. True hate comes from extremists and bigots, I find. I think a lot of people say they hate the SW prequels (for example) when they really just dislike them. I think people should really stop and think about the stuff they don't like before saying you hate it, cause hate generally comes with genuine vitriol and scorn.

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I would love to hear what people have to say about this. Does anyone else feel that there's a line between not liking, disliking, and hatred? Is perhaps the opposite term (love) misused as well? Are there any examples of things people say they hate that warrant discussion?

 

[Thaluikhain]

The SW prequels, I think, are a bad example. Many feel insulted by them, that Lucas decided he didn't need to put any effort into them, and that the fans were loyal/foolish enough to give him their money anyway. I can see that as causing hatred.

But, generally, yes, it's hyperbole.

 

[Mezahmay]

It's only misused IF you set the basis at the original definition. There's something called semantic stretch where as a word's usage is made more common, it loses emotion impact. So saying "hate" nowadays is what someone 20-30 years ago "disliked". The other problem with that is there are still plenty of uses as well where "hate" in its original impact is still appropriate as well as people who "hate" a bad song/TV show/movie/game because to them its lost its original emotional impact. Partly because it's just what you say, part becasue it still provides one's opinion without deeper, more specific description. In the respect of rapidly expressing one's opinion in a short format, social media could be partly to blame since it rarely allows for elaborate description.

That being said, I think when presented with the terms "not like", "dislike", and "hate", they will still organize them in that hierarchy even though the hierarchy has been compressed from the original intent of "hate" being absolute dislike the same way "like" and "love" have been conflated a lot in our age of internet hyperbole. Which leads into the final problem: the cat's out of the bag, genie's out of the bottle, etc. "Hate" is too commonplace to have its original emotional impact become the common definition again. It'd be easier to pick a new word to replace what "hate" used to be than try to restore "hate" to its former glory so to speak.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Yes, and I megaloathe you all for making it this way. =P

[sub]But yeah, in some cases it might be[/sub]

 

[TWRule]

"Love" is definitely misused. People say they 'love' their children, 'love' their pets, and 'love' their favorite foods without much care to distinguish those sorts of relations.

"Hate" is only the opposite of love if we are speaking in terms of a simplistic one-dimensional spectrum of approval and disapproval - we would tend to think that a relationship which could rightly be characterized as a 'loving' one would be of a qualitatively different sort than one which could be characterized as 'hateful', not just different in degrees of (dis)approval. Even using those terms to describe general sorts of relations would be pretty ham-handed.

I'm not sure what the word "hate" could even potentially describe. You associated it with bigotry, but that is too specific and probably imprecise. People who are bigots are upset about a perceived injustice of some sort generally, or else they simply they believe they have right opinions while others are simply wrong - they may not actually 'hate' anyone in particular. Perhaps we could say that resentment (more technically, 'ressentiment' if you want to get Nietzschean about it), might be a more proper meaning of 'hate' - though that would be to take it as notably different from common usage. Still, taking the word this way would address your intuition that people are misusing the word 'hate' when they are speaking of something they merely disapprove of, which is not in line with their preferences, etc.