[mikkergp]

While this may be true originally or historically, I don’t think it’s what most people today mean colloquially when they say American Exceptionalism, and I think there’s a large group of people that agree more with the colloquial definition.

[starkd]

Yes, I understand that. But it's very different from its origins. When America was founded, it consisted of mostly farmers. Basic agriculture. It produced nothing extraodinary and in relation to other countries. Britain was the financial powerhouse of the world, and there were no monoliths present. I just wanted to point out how language has been distorted to make the notion of exceptionalism something that it is not and never was.

[the_lonely_road]

Most humans were illiterate and had a small vocabulary consistently of only a tiny portion of their languages actual vocabulary. The modern world with its high literacy rates is exceptional. As a direct result many words have completely lost their meaning and in some cases even taken on opposite meaning to their original intention!

I believe this a direct result of people fighting to be accepted by the small elite that could read. Write a paper in the 1700’s using the phrase “literally famished” to mean you haven't eaten since lunch and you would be laughed out of the building. Write it now on Twitter and no one in your in group is going to call you out because they know what you mean and ‘sanctity’ of the language is much less important to them then social cohesiveness, if they even care at all.

[elevation]

The "colloquial" definition has been popularized by those who demean the US rhetorically. You can paint as a fool anyone who claims that "American Exceptionalism" even exists by contrasting the phrase to any statistic that makes the US look less than "exceptional."

However, the classical definition, that the U.S. has a historically unique operating agreement, is generally understood in politically conservative contexts.