Learn English – Does ‘affect’ imply negative effect
ambiguityword-usage
when I say A affects B, does it imply that A has a negative effect on B?
Best Answer
No.
Sunshine affects my mood.
That sentence is entirely neutral; it's impossible to say whether I feel better or worse in sunshine. One might assume that I enjoy it, or perhaps it exacerbates a skin condition. You can't tell.
Very often there is enough context to determine whether the effect of A on B is positive or negative...
Sunshine affects my mood. I'm always smiling.
Sunshine affects my mood. I try to stay indoors.
...but the context is necessary. The initial sentence on its own is not enough.
You can't really change the meaning of a word to suit your taste. "Love child" refers to a child born to parents not married to each other, and that is what people take away from it. If you ignore what others think and only pay attention to how you mean a word, you will cause your listeners or readers confusion or merriment.
(Incidentally, the word "love child" carries the same stigma in some other languages as well. 愛の子 (ai no ko or "child of love") means exactly the same thing.)
EDIT
Answering OP's question about how did it come to have a negative connotation. From Wikipedia article about Legitimacy:
At common law, legitimacy is the status of a child who is born to parents who are legally married to one another, or who is born shortly after the parents' marriage ends through divorce. In both canon and civil law, the offspring of putative marriages have been considered legitimate. For the opposite of legitimacy, the term illegitimate has been used about a child born to a woman and a man not married to one another, though in many societies today such terminology has become obsolete even in law, and abandoned in common communication in favor of less abrasive words such as extramarital or love child.
Illegitimate is a pejorative term, and, euphemism or no, love child ultimately inherits that meaning from its ancestor.
Best Answer
No.
That sentence is entirely neutral; it's impossible to say whether I feel better or worse in sunshine. One might assume that I enjoy it, or perhaps it exacerbates a skin condition. You can't tell.
Very often there is enough context to determine whether the effect of A on B is positive or negative...
...but the context is necessary. The initial sentence on its own is not enough.