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

[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...