Save “Battered” for Fish Sticks and Chicken Tenders: It’s Time for a Domestic Violence Language Upgrade

It’s so weird to me that in 2019 we still use a word, “battered,” whose first known usage was in 1593, as such a common descriptor within the domestic violence/intimate partner violence space. There are “battered women,” “battered women’s shelters,” offenders who are known as “batterers,” and so on. But what does this language convey, and is it time for an upgrade?

Years ago, we used to talk about “connotative” and “denotative” meanings of words and their symbolic power, thanks to linguist S.I. Hayakawa and his colleagues. Denotative is the clinical, actual dictionary definition of a word — no misinterpretations intended or implied — while connotative is the various ways the word is used and understood in real life, the associations we make with the word both good and bad, which often convey a sense or senses different from the word’s original meaning. Connotations trump denotations every time, because we connect with them more viscerally. They become unconscious shorthand, a verbal currency that we trade in that affects our listeners in ways beyond what the words actually mean.