Browsing through one of favourite websites about words, I chanced upon a short write-up about the word paparazzo. It's known today as the singular form of paparazzi, those photographers who hound celebrities for a chance to take candid and often compromising pictures. It turns out that the word Paparzzo made an appearance as the name of society photographer in Federico Fellini's 1960 film La Dolce Vita. A year later, it entered the English language and became the general term for a press photographer.
It was only in recent years that it started to take on the negative undertones as a photographer who hounds celebrities. Isn't it amazing how language evolves? This reminds me that when looking back on old texts, the same words often don't carry the same meaning.
And for proof of further word evolution, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary now has the word pap which carries the meaning of 'a paparazzo' and 'to take a photograph of a celebrity without permission'. How very interesting.
