Language is an amazingly complicated web of words, filled with subtle shades of difference and subconscious emotional contentions. For example, what's the real difference between "smart" and "intelligent"? Or "ridiculous" and "absurd"?
To a newly arrived alien, our many words might seem superfluous, especially considering that many are merely synonyms, like "little" and "small".
To a newly arrived alien, our many words might seem superfluous, especially considering that many are merely synonyms, like "little" and "small".
Another amazing thing about language is its fluidity. It adapts itself to best express what its users are trying to communicate. Many words that are today commonplace, like "router" or "laptop" were never heard of a hundred years ago, but entered our language as the need arose.
Even Shakespeare was not exempt from this frenzy of inventing words. If anything, he indulged in it more than most people--one source said that he invented c. 1,700 words! Among these words are: "lonely", "weird", "fixture", "madcap", "torture", and "Olympian." With this perspective, his plays read similarly to Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky...
Strangely enough, my humble family is presumptuous enough to add words to our language--because that's what you do with a living, breathing, pliable, absorbing language. Our specialty was combing words to derive new meanings from them. For instance, "dancerina" is a "Dancer" + "Ballerina" and a "Sitchenario" is a "Situation" + a "Scenario."
Discussing this one day with my neighbor, she said that her family created words also. "Celewreck" is a celephane mess, a "hoofhouse" is a barn, and a "flophouse" is when scads of relatives invade your house during the holidays and plop their loose articles everywhere while flopping inside their sleeping bags on the living room floor to create a living carpet. If any readers have invented new words, I'd love to hear them--please leave a comment!
Abbreviations are another interesting class of words--sometimes we use them so often that we practically forget what they originally stood for. Did you know that TIP stands for "To Insure Promptness"? English gentlemen would give their waiter a small coin at the beginning of their meal to insure that their meal arrived quickly. Does anyone in today's world actually remember that CD stands for "Compact Disc" or that DVD stands for "Digital Versatile/Video Disc"? Or that IMing and E-mailing are really abbreviations for 'Instant Messaging' and "Electronic Mail'?
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