Words infuse so much of life into every subject-ask
religious preachers and philosophers.
Still we hardly bother to study the Life of Words. Words
have colorful wings.
Life of words and their survival with chaste dignity of
denotation and decorated or decayed connotations is an interesting study by
itself with multiple controversies, claims and clear cut etymological evidences.
They are packed with interesting stories and histories of
their own evolutionary growth as well as strains which also throw light on many
aspects of evolution of life on the whole.
For example, some decades ago the words like ‘cyber’ ‘social
media’ never existed [though now many media articles are more unsocial].
Word acceptance, usage, popularity have their own
dynamics/metamorphosis which is sometimes etymologically obvious and
interesting but at times mysteriously mutilated for various reasons justifiable
or otherwise.
But we would be surprised to know the common connection of
words like “science, conscience and shit” which David Crystal-a great Linguist
says, “all had originally common etymology”.
I thought for a longtime that the Britishers were
obsessed with sex, of course like everyone else, and that’s why they have named
their places like Essex, Sussex and Middlesex.
But later on I learnt that they refer to only Saxons occupying different
directions with varying dialects.
WORD
Sometimes carries within it some affinity to its
etymological root;
Sometimes it gets exalted due to the deft handling of it by great writers, philosophers, linguists and others;
Sometimes it gets struck up in a vital context;
Sometimes it also acts as the very fulcrum of certain
contexts;
Sometimes it unfolds hitherto unraveled dimensions of its
original meaning;
Sometimes it exquisitely spreads its wings to fly and catch
the subtle nuances which bring out the various facets of its overall splendor;
Sometimes it embellishes and establishes through experiences
newer meanings;
Sometimes a newer connotation gets added to the word in its
journey through how it is perceived by socio- cultural acceptance and
assimilation;
Sometimes it establishes its life because of its
relationship to some other words or as a part of a popular idiom or phrase;
Sometimes it keeps modifying itself aesthetically to survive
or supplement some specific situation;
Sometimes it unshackles its fetters and acquires several new
meanings totally disconnected from its original DNA to sustain the life of
something else.
Sometimes , in this process, it not only blurs its own identity
as well as that of what it wanted to sustain beyond recognition but also gets totally delinked from its very root
[ as in the case of the word ‘religion’];
Sometimes its plasticity is optimally used to refer to a
multitude of emotions, feelings, situations, thoughts and ideas some of which
could be totally contradictory;
Sometimes its elastically expands to give space in its womb
to give birth to new jargon or new idioms or phrases;
Sometimes it gets married to some other words and in its
proliferation of love, lives to copulate and cohabit with a stranger, quiet
oblivious of its own identity in that romantic movement.
Relevant gems from David Crystal’s book WORD,
WORDS, WORDS and THE STORIES OF ENGLISH.
David crystal writes, “It remains a lexicological puzzle why
some words were accepted and some rejected. We do not know how to account for
the linguistic ‘survival of the fittest’. Both impede and expede were
introduced during the same period as well as disabuse and disadorn,
but in each of these pairs the first item stayed in the language and the second
did not”.
He also writes, “If English is to remain a world language,
then it needs a variety as a reference standard, but as the result of process
which have taken place-and which are an inevitable consequence of the nature of
language-the character of building has changed. Whereas Standard English was
once viewed as a cathedral or a monument, now it has to be seen more as a sky
scrapper, with a specific function of facilitating intelligibility, coexisting
in a city of other tall buildings which perform other functions, such as the
facilitation of local identity. It is no longer the only building in the city,
and certainly no longer the only building thought to be worth a visit”.
And of course some
links from my blog with some references from leading linguists.
Here is link giving some interesting write up by another
great but less publicized linguist and one of my favorites Vygotsky who made
intense psychological study into words and their relation to human life.
Sometimes we are tricked into by words due to our lack of
understanding of local /regional connotations.
For example some weeks ago, I was going to a place in Tamil Nadu
and the driver asked for the exact location of a place from three different people and all of them said,
in good Indian English, ‘ Sir drive straight for one kilometer then you will
come across a ‘DUMMY SIGNAL’ and there you take the right turn and proceed’.
After reaching the spot I understood ‘DUMMY SIGNAL’ is a
signal which mostly does not work properly and even when it does no one bothers
to take note of it.
Now tell me which dictionary can help me understand the
actual meaning of ‘DUMMY SIGNAL’ though both are proper English words and not
any Anglicized version of a local language
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