Evolution Of The Word Followers From Milton's Paradise Lost

Followers, a word affects us a long period of time

Surfing the social media platform, the word "followers" is not difficult to be seen. Social Media Companies such as Facebook, Instagram broadly use the word "follow" to indicate the users keep tracking on somebody's status. The person who follows somebody is called follower. "Followers" is a word being used in Old English time, with a totally different meaning. With a long history, the meaning of the word has been changed and evolved. It is worth to discover the evolution of the word "followers". This etymology essay aims to examine the history and the relevant variations of the word and explain how the word is used from Milton's Paradise Lost.

In recent years, the word "followers" is used

There were several lines that the word "followers" has been used by Milton, for example, line 37, 50, 76. Although most of them did not appear as the word "followers" we know today, some of them even had substituted by other spellings such as crew and host. For example, in line 76 of book 1 of the Paradise Lost, it addressed that "There the companions of his fall, o'rewhelm'd" (Book 1, 76), which is translated as "This is where he saw all his defeated followers." in Modern English. Milton did not mention the word “followers” but the word "fall". In modern English, the word "fall" is used oftentimes, which normally means an object descends from a high position to a low position. Nevertheless, it was meant to the group of people dropping down in the original text, it implied that people rebel against God will eventually go to the hell. It is clear that "fall" in the poem may not be directly referred to what we know about “followers” today; it has the mutual meaning of a group of people with the similar sight of view. If they rebel against God, they will receive a penalty and fall into the hell. Why the writer wrote the word “fall” instead of “folgere”? Scanning the text, Milton usually mentioned the words related to followers when he wanted to indicate that group of people rebelling against the god. The original words not only had the meaning of a group of people having the similar view, it

High-quality leaders have followers following behind, because of the leadership and vision of the leaders. But the question is whether the followers are agreed with the leaders' values, or whether we must agree with the leaders' vision. In today's social media platforms, we often see the word "followers" is used to indicate that you are subscribing to the person's news feed. The problem is that this word is used too excessive that may sidetrack the actual meaning of the word, especially in the degree of participation. Because of this, as stated in the Oxford English Dictionary, a draft of an additional meaning was put in June 2013, indicated that "followers" meant "a person who follows a particular person, group, on a social media website or application.". Judging from this, there is much less degree of advocating belief of the person in the additional meaning of the word, compared with the popular one. It is projected that there is a high chance of the word being evolved