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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

I realize that the title here is what Google put on their blog, but it seems to me that "detrust" would be more accurate than "distrust".

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“distrust” is an established English words that means exactly what Google intends. “detrust” is, while not hard to figure out, an unnecessary neologism.

But "distrust" doesn't convey the full meaning. They're not talking about merely not trusting Symantec certificates; they're talking about removing existing trust in the certificates.

> But "distrust" doesn't convey the full meaning. They're not talking about merely not trusting Symantec certificates; they're talking about removing existing trust in the certificates.

“distrust” alone only communicates not trusting, true. But the word isn't alone, it is in the phrase “plan to distrust”, which communicates that the not-trusting is a change from the status quo that will occur in the future.

which communicates that the not-trusting is a change

Not necessarily. "Plan to distrust" would be consistent with "a company has announced that they're going to start issuing certificates; we won't trust them". You and I know that Symantec is a major CA which is currently trusted by Chrome, but that isn't implied by the headline.

If it makes the two of you feel any better, the US Supreme Court justices also don't agree on whether to use precise or approachable language. Different strokes.

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/garner-transcripts-1.pdf

Isn't 'removing existing trust' the same as 'distrust'? The word 'distrust' in no way implies that you have NEVER trusted them.

"Distrust" doesn't imply that you have never trusted them, but it does allow for you never having trusted them, and so communicates less.

Generally, yes if it's without context, but "Plan to Distrust" or "Going To Distrust" (and similar) certainly implies that there previously was some level of trust. I mean if you had no trust to begin with, why would you even say it that way (or say it at all)?

As pointed out elsewhere, statements of future distrust admit the possibility that there wasn't yet opportunity to trust or distrust. For instance, if Symantec had never produced certificates and announced that they were going to, and Google announced "when they do, we won't trust them".

Why create a new word when we can just add a new adjacent meaning to an existing nearby word...

Language is mutable for this reason. If we didn't add any words but just kept using "nearby words" then we would be DANGER NO GO.

untrust?

"stop trusting" would perhaps be clearer, sure. We don't necessarily need a single word for that.

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