Reality changes words far more than words can ever change reality.

Forsyth’s line reverses a common assumption about language’s power: instead of words shaping the world, the world more decisively reshapes words. Meanings drift as social practices, technologies, and institutions change; vocabulary adapts to new realities, and old terms acquire new senses or lose force. The quote also cautions against rhetorical idealism—the belief that renaming or reframing something is sufficient to alter the underlying conditions. Words can influence perception and action, but they are constrained by material facts and lived experience. In Forsyth’s characteristically linguistic worldview, the statement underscores semantic change as a historical process driven less by prescription than by usage under real-world pressures.