 Gloria MacKay | Just Words: Loosely StrungBy: Aquillrelle 
Just Words: Loosely Strung Words are like people: even when you think you know them, they show up filled with surprises. And just like people, some words linger on while others come and go without asking. I love to watch words march across the page like little black ants. I love to walk into a room where sentences swirl like spaghetti, and when a new word bounces off me like a rock on a windshield I hurry to look it up before it disappears. Just as I have been told a person can't be too rich or too thin I figure it is not possible for anyone to have too many words. The more words we know the more clearly we speak; the more clearly we speak the better we understand each other. What could simpler than that? I do doubt, however, that more is always better than less. Once I realized a square of Belgian chocolate is more satisfying than a whole bag of M and M's I became aware I might be a minimalist, whatever that is. I like haiku, short stories, poems that fit on page, uncluttered paintings and little black dresses with pearls. As for our language, still growing faster than a downhill snowball, is it possible we are biting off more words than we can chew? I have wondered about words since I learned what they were … how one word can mean so many things? Second for example. I knew second hand meant used but what about the second hand on my dad's nice watch? Why did he have to buy a new one? And when it came to second mortgage, second childhood and second fiddle I reasoned that the first of each must have come and gone: only later did I learn people can get second mortgages while still attached to the first; begin a second childhood without leaving the first; and even though one can move from second to first violin this does not necessarily apply to a fiddle. Noah Webster put together our country's first dictionary—not because he wanted to know how many words we had but because he believed we should use our words and spell our words The American Way—removing the u from color, for instance, and chopping k out of music. Since this was to be an American dictionary, Noah made sure to include words such as skunk and squash, words the British knew nothing about. Still, dictionary or not, I was confused. With all the words we can choose from (the current Webster's New College Dictionary shows "around" 207,000 of them, about 137,000 more than Noah envisioned) why, every year, we add more. Those born in 1960, for instance, arrived before area code was a twinkle in a dictionary's eye. There were no brownie points, no discos, no microwave ovens and not one single glitch. The 70's? No airheads, bean counters, deadbeat dads or surrogate mothers. How did we manage without them? Once I learned that flammable and inflammable mean the same thing I became convinced Noah should have tried harder to give each word a place of its own just as every chicken has a pot and every worm a turn. Some words and phrases I feel I've used all my life actually showed up in dictionaries only twenty years ago: boom box, voice mail, caller ID, channel surfing, trophy wives and glass ceiling. The same for mall rat, managed care, virtual reality and AIDS. And not until the dog days of the last millennium did a bad hair day get a lexicographer's recognition … along with buffalo wing, car jacking, designated driver, soccer mom, granny dumping, eye candy, dead man bounce and yada, yada, yada. In case you care, eye candy is an attractive person of limited merit, granny dumping is simply dumping grandma (not the name of a group) and dead man bounce is a Wall Street expression describing stocks trying to hang on after hitting the skids. As for yada, yada, yada? Just another way of saying blah, blah, blah. I like to use cool new words; they make me feel part of the times. But I don't think I speak any better than people did in Noah Webster's time when simple words like squash and skunk were the new kids on the block, when reality was never virtual, and buffaloes did not have wings. To order:http://www.lulu.com/ Author:http://www.aquillrelle.com/ End
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