morpho logy

[rone]

After completing this vocabulary quiz (which i found via Allan's gentil journal; i scored 166, if you're curious), i was reminded of something that is a bit of a secret shame. You know the Íñigo Montoya quote, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." I often use words i've picked up, which meanings i've inferred from context but have never actually looked up because, hey, it's obvious from context what they mean. Except it turns out that they don't mean exactly what i think they mean. And that bothers and embarrasses me. Which is why, because i hit the dictionary so often (and, hell, an OED might be expensive, but i hit the book so often it would be a worthwhile investment, but i'm cheap...), i've bound F1 on my UNIX shell to fire up lynx to look up a word online.

There are so many words out there waiting to be actively used; instead, we misuse perfectly good words because we think they mean something that isn't exactly what they really mean, and we misuse them often enough until, voilà, they do mean that something that we've been using all along. If we can't be bothered to be precise in our choice of words, how can we be precise in expressing our thoughts?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Language is a living thing. Get over it.

By the way, don't you pay attention to my sidebar? (Probably too busy commenting on half-cooked musings on the war, or lack thereof...) You can get an electronic OED subscription at eatmorewords.org (http://eatmorewords.org/) for ten dollars a year. Or you can wait for me to get my subscription and tell you if it's worth it. :.P

(Was it Iñigo? I thought it was just Inigo.)

—Allan (http://radio.weblogs.com/0105058/)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Language is a living thing, but i'd like it better if it were more like a vertebrate than a fungus.

Yeah, i saw the eatmorewords.org thing some time ago. I meant to subscribe, but i forgot...

And it is definitely Íñigo, as is its derived patronymic, Íñiguez. Huzzah for wacky Basque names!

[(Anonymous)]

I would say that most languages have a backbone in the (rock solid) grammar and the words that are most often used, such as the personal pronouns, articles, common verbs, etc....the common usage. The rest of the words roll around and slough in their various contexts and connotations until they either fix or become so hazy in usage that they are later used as synonyms for the F-word. (Remember how Ronnie and Dave used argue over the derivation of that word? Or was that Ronnie and me?)

—Allan (http;//radio.weblogs.com/0105058/)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

So, language is a snake.

I don't remember who. We probably all did. "Good times... good times," as whippersnappers like to say these days.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey! Remember that all those e-mail cascades? And the politically correct ketchup cascade? Language is an Ophidian-American, you insensitive clod! Livejournal weblogs, the new Usenet. *shudder*

Good times... that was a Bill McNeil quote from NewsRadio, wasn't it? I thought kids nowadays are saying, "back in the day." Or have I misinferred?

By the way, here's a NewsRadio drinking game (http://www.geocities.com/chengwes/nr_drinking_game.html). It's really late here.

—Allan (http://radio.weblogs.com/0105058/)

[(Anonymous)]

Actually, I have a related but similar shame: I mispronounce words whose meanings I immediately infer from context. For the longest time, I thought undermine rhymed with determine. I was cured of this notion when a comic shop owner laughed at me when I used it in front of Art Adams or someone. Er, I don't remember who it was. But he was hawking the uninked pencils of some of his pages. No, wait, it was... one of the Sandman artists, I think the one who pencilled on the Wake. Oh, worms and grackleflints... Google.com... Michael Zulli? No, it was... Bryan Talbot, who was selling his Arkwright and One Bad Rat books. Egads and little fishes, that was embarrassing. (e... m... b... a... whew.)

—Allan (http://radio.weblogs.com/0105058/)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I do that, too, but it doesn't provoke shame, just wholesale irritation. I ascribe it to growing up in a furrin land and picking up most of my early vocabulary from books. The one i remember mispronouncing most vividly was variety, VAR-yet-ee. I still find a word once in a while i mispronounce, and my stepkids mock me for it. Feh.

[(Anonymous)]

I would say that there is a rather large difference between your kids mocking you in the privacy of your home and being mocked in front of someone you—and a whole line of people stretching out behind you—respected and were trying to impress. (Face it... when you use "undermine" you've left the koine.)

Thankfully that did not happen with Stanley Kunitz or Neil Gaiman.

—Allan (http://radio.weblogs.com/0105058/)

184

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

Man, that is one hard test.

Isn't English your second language, by the way? (Not that it mattered for half this test, it seemed)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Not technically, and certainly not practically, these days. Yo espeako el espaniol, duuuud!

[waider.livejournal.com]

I'm not gonna comment on pronunciation variations ("a-loo-mih-num? what?") but I will note this: I like to be precise in my own use of the language, but I also like to keep a conversation flowing. So if someone interrupts me with a correction because I've used a fractionally wrong word, or perhaps slightly abused a word, I am unhappy with them, because if they're correcting me then they knew exactly what I meant and thus didn't need to do that.

I know far too many people who do this.

[littleamerica.livejournal.com]

One hundred forty-four; eleven wrong.

I think there's a good reason why perfectly good words get abandoned in favor of misappropriations, misuses, and neologisms, but I can't express it without resorting to analogy. And that probably means I don't know what I'm talking about.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Being a writer, I like to be precise, but language mutates so rapidly that it's hard to keep up (my favorite example: "inflammable", which now means the opposite of what it used to).

Add to this that I live with a guy who misuses words constantly--probably due to his dyslexia, rwx theorizes and I'm inclined to agree, as it's definitely not lack of intelligence--and I'm often tempted to throw the towel off the bridge.

The French word that I was taught meant "to kiss" in second grade now means "to fuck". Prior to this, there was no direct translation, which has always amused me. (On the other hand, French has two different words for "lover", depending on the nature of the relationship.)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Or even worse, words which meant one thing, then through misuse mean something else, then through more misuse mean its original meaning again. I ran into one such word recently, but now i forget it...

[jeff2001.livejournal.com]

I got a 167. Maybe more if I hadn't rushed it, but there were just so many goddamn questions!

I am reminded more of

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

El Guapo: "Why would you say I have a plethora when you don't know what a plethora is?!"

175 here, though I wish the results page listed which questions were marked as wild guesses, because there were a lot.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey! I just realized that you didn't quote my post. That's kinda mean, Ron, innit? Though I suppose you may have found it through another source. Never mind.

—Allan (http://radio.weblogs.com/0105058/)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Nah, i found it through your blog. (http://radio.weblogs.com/0105058/) I abjectly apologize.