A Word About Words
Love.
Fight.
Sweet.
Brilliant.
Sick.
Each of these words has multiple wildly diverse meanings, depending on context, tone, and even the age or nationality of the speaker.
When working with young writers, I often try to guide them to a recognition of this fact – which is important not just to writers, but to anyone who ever hopes to effectively communicate with fellow human beings.
I love chocolate is very different from I love you and want to be your life partner.
A fight for civil rights is nothing like a barroom brawl (or a violent insurrection), which in turn is nothing like battling for your life when battling cancer (or COVID-19).
Cookies are physically sweet, a video of a toddler dancing with her mailman is emotionally sweet, and sweet is slang for anything the speaker happens to like (even if it is not normally a “nice” occurrence – for instance, the just desserts of a criminal).
Harry Potter and other British books, movies, and shows have popularized brilliant as a description not just of mental acuity but of anything clever or successful – or just an occurrence that made the speaker happy (think of Ron’s declaration that Hermione’s punch to Malfoy’s nose was “brilliant”).
For a (blessedly) short time, sick was slang for “good.”
I started this post because I was personally aggrieved by the phrase “QAnon Shaman” in reference to Jacob Chansley, one of the January 6th insurrectionists. According to Dictionary.com, shamans use “magic to cure illness.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, shamans “typically . . . practice divination and healing.” According to Wikipedia, the English word “shaman” is thought to derive from words meaning “know” and/or “priest.” And, as Chansley’s own lawyer argued, shamanism is a recognized faith. When creating the character Shaman Ngaka for Brillig, it was these definitions I had in mind. (Of course, Shaman Ngaka is a twisted, dark soul, unlike the other shamans in Sihra, but stay tuned – he may yet reveal some redeeming characteristic!) Mr. Chansley’s actions on January 6 were anything but healing or divine.
But as so often happens, my writing has a mind of its own, and I started thinking about how lucky we are to have language. Words are marvelous (wonderful, amazing, terrific, phenomenal, fabulous, outstanding, excellent . . .). Words make poetry possible, from Amanda Gorman’s “the power to author a new chapter, To offer hope and laughter to ourselves,” to Mary Oliver’s “have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life?” Words give us essays about how to heal our political divisions and make reparations to victims of discrimination, reports of groundbreaking scientific studies, news articles that connect us to our town, our state or province, our country, our world. And, of course, words transport us outside ourselves – from mysteries solved by Sherlock Holmes to the singers of sea shanties in Wales, from Narnia and Hogwarts to colonies on Mars.
So here’s to words!
Get out there and use some
- but choose wisely.
Because words matter.
Images by RetroSupply; thumbnail image by Markus Winkler;
Social Media image by Patrick Fore
