Quote from Pension_Admin:
....Reminiscences of a Stock Operator?
Why not Reminiscences of a Stock Trader? OR
Reminiscences of a Scalper?
OR
Reminiscences of a Day Trader?
I am just curious.
Pension_Admin
I'll give it a shot.
A word has both definition and connotation.
Definition is what is written in a dictionary, connotation is what we really mean when we use it.
Operator, strangely enough, has retained its neutrality over the years: telephone operator, machine operator, etc. I cannot think of any negative connoation attached to the word. In hindsight, the author chose a very good word. But inside the book, the author used the word speculator a lot. It seems to me he liked the word speculator because it described accurately the nature of what Jesse did. However, he also understood the negative connoation of the word.
The negative connotations of a word have forced people to move to different words, though the definitions of the old and new words are the same. For example, negro to black to African-American, sales to marketing, secretary to administration specialist, salesman to account executive, etc.
Sometimes the connotations of a word change, for example, Japanese car (cheap plastic to reliable), geek, and, of course, day trader (broke to rich).
