Reviving the original meaning of "demoralize."

Here's something in the "Suggestions" section of James Damore's suddenly famous memo:

De-moralize diversity.

As soon as we start to moralize an issue, we stop thinking about it in terms of costs and benefits, dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly punish those we see as villains to protect the “victims.”

The hyphen in "de-moralize" shows the writer meant to distinguish his word from the usual "demoralize" and to push us to see the new, unusual meaning he intends and thinks the reader can figure out.

(I'm reminded of an essay I wrote in junior high school. Taking the position that grades should be abolished, I titled the essay "The De-Grading System." Ironically, I received a C, and I've never forgotten what the teacher wrote on it: "Great title, but what are you talking about?")

Damore's use of "de-moralize" jumped out at me, because I've been listening to the wonderful lectures "English in America: A Linguistic History," and I happened to learn just the other day that "demoralize" was the one word that was first used by Noah Webster.

As a lexicographer, Noah Webster was focused on recording the words other people used and not on inventing words of his own, but he did also write a piece called "The Revolution in France" (1794), which contained this passage:

However necessary might be the revolution in France, and however noble the object, such great changes and a long war will have an effect on the moral character of the nation, which is deeply to be deplored. All wars have, if I may use a new but emphatic word, a demoralizing tendency; but the revolution in France, in addition to the usual influence of war, is attended with a total change in the minds of the people. They are released, not only from the ordinary restraints of law, but from all their former habits of thinking. From the fetters of a debasing religious system, the people are let loose in the wide field of mental licentiousness; and as men naturally run from one extreme to another, the French will probably rush into the wildest vagaries of opinion, both in their political and moral creeds. The decree of the convention authorizing divorces, upon the application of either party, alleging only unsuitableness of temper, hereby offering allurements to infidelity and domestic broils, is a singular proof of the little regard in which the morals of the nation are held by the ruling party. The efforts made by the convention to exterminate every thing that looks like imposing restraint upon the passions, by the fear of a supreme being and future punishments, are a most extraordinary experiment in government, to ascertain whether nations can exist in peace, order and harmony, without any such restraints. It is an experiment to prove that impressions of a supreme being and a divine providence, which men have hitherto considered as natural, are all the illusions of imagination; the effect of a wrong education. It is an experiment to try whether atheism and materialism, as articles of national creed, will not render men more happy in society than a belief in a God, a Providence and the Immortality of the soul. The experiment is new; it is bold; it is astonishing.

The Oxford English Dictionary identifies that as the first published use of the word. You can see that it means to do the reverse of moralizing. To moralize is "To interpret morally or symbolically; to explain the moral meaning of." And Webster's addition of the prefix "de" is easily understood as reversing the process.

Webster didn't use a hyphen. He just said: I'm creating a new word. But Damore's hyphen does the same thing, nudging you to build the easily understood parts into a word that you'll be able to figure out. Interestingly, we have to figure this idea of reversing the process of moralizing all over again, because the original meaning of the word, Webster's meaning, is almost never used anymore. In OED parlance, it's "archaic." (It's not obsolete, however, because The South Bend Tribune used it in 1998 to say "The whole unclean and sordid spectacle that has enriched the press, the media and the legal establishment at the expense of demoralizing young adults and people in general." We need not digress into what that "unclean and sordid spectacle" was. Though it sounds exciting, it's irrelevant to the subject at hand, the meaning of "demoralize.")

The word "demoralize" — as ordinary speakers of the language use it — has come to refer not to the destruction of moral principles but the destruction of morale. (I wonder if it was ever pronounced "de-morale-ize.") Somehow this newer meaning overwhelmed the original meaning, perhaps because it caught on in the military context, where there were so many occasions to deploy it and perhaps  because we haven't felt much of a need to talk about the reverse process of moralizing.

Of course, we still use and easily understand the word "moralizing." We continue to talk about infusing a subject with ideas about morality. The oldest related word is the adjective "moral," which means: "Of or relating to human character or behaviour considered as good or bad; of or relating to the distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil, in relation to the actions, desires, or character of responsible human beings; ethical." That goes back to the 14th century. The word "morale" is much more recent. Though it once meant the same as "morals," the usage we understand now — hope and confidence — arose in the military context, just like "demoralize," as we understand it today.

So my question for you is: Should we — on the occasion of the Damore memo — revive the original meaning of "demoralize"? It would confuse people for a while, but we could help them by retaining the hyphen until the new usage catches on. The benefit would be the parallelism with "moralize." Since we tend to object to "moralizing," "demoralizing" could be a useful word pointing the way to a needed process that should be applied where moralizing has already occurred. As Damore used the word, it was a call for sober scientific research and rational reflection: We've loaded too much morality into diversity, so let's demoralize it, clear out the obstructions, and figure out what's really going on.