The term COMRADE bears political overtones.Congress President Sonia Gandhi has used the term as an adjunct to late communist patriarch Jyoti Basu.This may yield political controversy . In the context we may look up the word in the dictionary for a fair idea about it.
According to The Pocket Oxford Dictionary, Comrade is 'mate or fellow in work or play or fighting, equal with whom one is on familiar terms.'
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary says,Comrade is 'a person who is a member of the same trade union as oneself, or of the same socialist or communist political party,etc.'
While the first meaning is wider,the second one is restricted. We don't know in what sense Ms Gandhi has used the word in reference to the late communist leader.
As society evolves, our behaviour also evolves.Speech also is a kind of behaviour.The meaning,connotation,overtone and undertone of a word undergo changes over time.Besides,it is a fact that words frequently have several meanings and meanings change in time,just like other elements in language.Thus,in Old English 'tartness' could be attributed to winter and could encompass such possibilities as freezing to death. Today the meaning has changed considerably.
Samuel Johnson in his dictionary defines a 'humanist' as 'a philologer,a grammarian'. We now know these meanings have changed considerably.In Frank Norris's 'Octopus'(1901),a '...typewriter rose and withdrew,thrusting her pencil into the coil of her hair',in the 1990s 'typists' rather than tywriters engage in such activities.In brief,meanings change.
