Saturna

i am someone who really digs on words. my mother instilled a love of reading and a love of the dictionary as a constant learning tool. we used to play a game where we would randomly pick words out of the dictionary and try to guess their definitions.

i can be really anal-retentive about words, which is why i probably do not write here as much as i could, or why i think so much about what i read. i also usually use fairly simple words most of the time, especially in print. that is because i am mortified that something like this will happen:

you are reading something and you are unsure of a word. you want to just define it contextually, but something does not sit right with that, so you look it up. once you do that, you find the meaning is not at all what the context would imply, but actually quite the opposite. this, then, leaves you wondering what the hell the writer really meant. the sentence appears to be positive, but with a clarification of the definition of the suspect word, it becomes not positive at all. this, then, leaves you pondering if the writer was intentionally writing with slight, or if they just do not know the meaning of the word, and if that is the case, why are they using it?

i guess this kind of thing is really not much to be spending my energy on, but then i am that person who loathes the use of "nauseous" to mean "feeling like you need to vomit," when the proper usage is "nauseated." (or, at least, it was - the constant misuse has changed the meaning, so the rest of my life it will be acceptable for people to say, "I am nauseous," and all i will hear is "i make people want to throw up.")

silly, i know. but words are powerful, certainly more powerful than fists, and should be used very carefully. no one wants to be left wondering if something is a compliment or an insult, and one misused (or not?) word can make all the difference.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 at 7:41 am and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.