What do you see here? Look again! Do you see the difference? I always like to bounce ideas for blogs off my friend Jason Myles, and yesterday we talked about a blog that talked about words, especially really cool unused words. SO with that in mind, this blog is just going to be something of a rant, a story, a lecture, a report, an exaggeration, or a collaboration of some of my thoughts on words. to take a line from the internet star Bo Burnham, we are going to be like Hamlet here and be all about words, words, words.
It's always really interesting to learn about words, because it's something that most of us don’t really ever think about. There are so many words, and we hardly even use any of them. Scientists and linguists argue over the average total number of words that people know. Some say the number is around 25,000. Others put the number somewhere near 45,000. However, something that most researches agree on is the fact that the average person on any given day only uses a lilliputian amount of the total words they know, or around 3,000 words. Take a minute, think about it. Ding! So why do we use so few words? Are we really just that lazy? Or does it go along with this underlying fear that involves us going outside of our comfort zone? This Guy Over Here, reporting live, from the field. ABC news. Pun intended.
Have you ever thought about the odd phenomenon of making up words? The English dictionary increases every year with new words that have been created, either out of necessity, or out of creativity. But where do these new words come from? Why are they so commonly used and accepted? I believe that words are like ideas. They are foolproof, shatter proof, bulletproof, and all other sorts of 'proofs' but the most important thing that words are is contagious. They get stuck in your head. Sometimes, they even come out of our mouths without us even thinking it. They are masters of hide and seek, especially when you are looking for that one exact word. They are con artists, convincing us that they mean something rather than what they really do. If you hang out with a friend that says an array of different/strange words on a consistent basis, you will find that pretty soon you start saying or at least thinking those different/strange words. I always like to wonder if I could make up my own word that could become so gradually incorporated into our everyday lives that it would become an official word. Probably not, but I think it would be fun to try.
Now that those above topics have been questioned and discussed, we can move into the real stuff. Real Talk. One of my biggest pet peeves with words is that some of them have lost their value, their importance. These words are so widely overused that they don't even really mean anything anymore. This isn't the case for most words, and for some people, those words that are overused still have some meaning. Two classic examples of this problem are the words love and hate. Love is such a strong word. It is a word that used to mean so much. It is still important, but it has been thrown around like a flag on a windy day and now I think for most of us, it has lost a lot of its value. Saying I love you is almost like an everyday phrase now, something that could fall out of anyone's mouth at any time. Along with this is the word hate. Hate is such a strong word. It is one of the strongest words to orally display one's anger towards another/item. However, like love, we throw around hate like the word carries no impact or weight. There are a lot of words like this, which we have become so desensitized to that we don't even realize that the perpetual use has devalued these words down to almost nothing. Like I said before, this isn't the case for some people, but this holds true for the general public. Why do we take words that are seemingly so important and make them so non-important? It's no good!
Quite possibly the coolest thing about words is their infiniteness of possibilities. Think about how many sentences have never ever been formed, never ever been uttered, or even thought. How many things can you honestly say that you could be the first person ever to do in the entire history of the world? Well, come up with an awesome sentence and chances are you could be! Did you know that William Shakespeare invented close to 2000 words? In the plays of his that we have recorded, he wrote over 17,600 words, a tenth of which did not exist during his time. So, even though William had an awesome last name going for him, his incredible way with words and his willingness to just make up words on the go launched him to one of the best writers of all time, not to mention one of the single largest individual contributors to our current language. Pretty impressive stuff.
Anywho, back to words. Words are fantastic. They are magical. By themselves they are powerful. Together, they are unbreakable. They are what you make of them. They can be boring. They can be fun. The right words at the right moment could make life or break life. Four words more and you could be married. With two words you could lose your job. But words don’t necessarily have to always be so important. Two words start a baseball game. One word questions everything. Three words can end a relationship. The list could go on and on. It's simply humbling to think of how powerful words are and how much impact we place on words. So be quick to listen and slow to speak. It could cost you something very important.
One of my favorite things to look at about words is demonstrated above. Not many people realize that when we read something, our eyes take in the first and last letter and then our brains create the word from there. That is why, remarkably, we can still read entire paragraphs where almost every single word is spelled wrong. This always amazes me. We are so familiar with words that we don't even read the entire word in and of itself.
After reading this, you may feel yourself experiencing a burning desire to go out and attempt to learn as many cool and unused words as possible. If you have this desire, more power to you. I feel as if trying to force words into your vocabulary is never a good thing. People can tell when a person is genuinely speaking, or if they are trying everything in their power to sound intellectual and intelligent. Like most skills, learning and using new words takes time and practice. We have to feel comfortable about the new word and its usage before it starts sounding natural in our everyday language. So if you still have the desire to learn about cool unused words, I would go to dictionary.com and sign up for or subscribe to the word of the day. You can also find a link that sends you to every single word of the day for quite some time back as well. Even if we set out to expand our vocabulary with new and interesting words, we have to remember that sometimes, things are best said in the simplest manner.
I hope that you find this blog to be a bit stimulating, as some of the small topics that I’ve discussed are things that we see everyday in society, but we never really pay much attention to. Words are some of the most fascinating things in our culture/society today when you actually take the time to think about them. You can still communicate without words; however, words are a vital part of our communication. In the end, it’s all about words, words, words.
Closing tip for the week: Study for finals with a friend. One of the best ways to make sure that you know something is to explain it. If you can explain a topic well, then you know that you have a firm grasp on the subject matter.
Closing quote for the week: ‘The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.’ ~Mark Twain
Riding low with the NW333 and pedaling with the Easy Rider,
Signing off,
JD
