Semantic Haloes

In his Studies of Words C.S. Lewis wrote of 'semantic haloes', the practice of making a word or idea sacrosanct, giving it an encompassed, often emotive, reading which destroys the definition. Instead of being a word of description of something definite, it becomes a term of praise or condemnation. We are presently seeing so much language used this way (largely for the end of social engineering) that one almost needs a seperate dictionary for this hagiography of language.