How Devoted Should We Be to Maintaining Definitions?
Australians like to change
words and then never replace the old one. Or they adapt a word from two
separate places and still call the two different items the same thing. Potato
chips could be crisps, but usually
you call them chips, and fries are fries if you’re talking McDonalds, but other
than that they’re also chips.
And as much as they like
to shorten words, they have a lot of long, “politically correct” names for
things like “traditional lemonade” instead of just calling it lemonade and just
calling their Sprite something else. Or, we could go really wild and just give
lemonade an actual word all its own, but Australians are apparently just better
at context according to the man who doesn’t understand why I can call my cat
the Little Black Bastard but he can’t.
My time in Australia had made me strongly in favor of France’s “No English!” edict.
As a writer and recovering
Grammar Nazi, I often contemplate how anal we should be about word choice and
maintaining its official definition. On the one hand, the more staunchly we
retain a meaning, the easier it is to communicate. On the other, writers often
talk about ideas, emotions, or things we simply do not have a word for. Meaning
comes from the combination of sounds, how we choose to pair our words. They are
not limited, and, in fact are incomplete, without each other. Plus, considering
our desire to rejuvenate a reader’s perspective on something old, there is a
lot of merit for someone using a word in an expected way.
And, no matter how hard we
try to restrain words, they will always develop different meanings to each
individual.
The first criticism I ever
remember getting was on the word “glance.” What’s kind of funny about it was I didn’t
really agree with her assessment, but I kind of assumed that I was just being
egotistical. It wasn’t until years later that I thought back on it, actually
looked up the definition, and considered why she had that response to realize
that she was, in the main ways, wrong.
A character fled from a
dragon, diving down to the shelter of a rock. He glanced upwards as the thing
swoops over his head. He grabs his sword and stands. Or something.
She claimed that glancing
was a causal action.
She was a fellow high
school student, but someone I respected, senior to me and a big reader. I
didn’t make the change and probably argued with her, but it stuck with me ever
since. I remember saying, “I meant he looked quickly,” which I think she
shrugged at.
This is the reason I hate
line edits. If you look up the definition of “glance,” it is predominantly
about speed, sometimes about light, sight, or bouncing. Nowhere does it discuss
the attitude of the doer.
But does that mean it’s
not casual?
To her, it was. And many
of us have unofficial connotations and connections that, whether writers like
it or not, can strongly confuse or jar a reader, even if they are the only ones
in the world who feel that way.
It’s also a prime time in
which people’s view of you affects what you are “allowed” to do. I talk about
the time I used the word chagrin in which a friend was certain I made up
the word chagrin even though he had read Twilight
a hundred times which had been accused by naysayers of using that word far
too much.
You might be utilizing
something completely correctly and yet the reader assumes you don’t know what
you’re talking about because somewhere along the line they had made a falseconnection with the word.
Or perhaps the connection
is obvious, but pointlessly restricting. The most controversial line I’ve ever
written was “She furrowed her mouth.” Now, of course “furrowed” doesn’t mean “her
brow” because “she furrowed her brow” would be redundant and “she furrowed”
would be a perfectly acceptable sentence. Yet the unofficial link between the
two made some people very concerned that I would describe it that way. “Don’t
you usually furrow your brow?”
Sometimes you have to say
something that makes perfect sense but seems oxymoronic. Or maybe is officially
oxymoronic. A fellow writer once complained about a book she was reading on how
“You can’t whisper loudly.” Well, isn’t “loud” contextual? Can you see how she
might be whispering louder now than at other times?
In that case, I felt she
knew exactly what the author wanted and was just being pedantic.
Words change over time,
and in many cases what is officially correct
just sounds weird to native speakers. I joke about the time a white American
messaged me and I believed English was his second language due to his overly
formal, technically precise way of speaking. But, no, he was just a writer.
The issue of different
meanings behind the same words is most apparent in clichéd writing advice.
Things like “show, don’t tell,” “kill your darlings,” and even “writer’s
block,” might not be the same idea to two separate people. One gentleman
recently told me that show don’t tell means specifics, writing that “he did his
chores and went to work” is telling while “he mowed the lawn and went to his
accounting firm” is showing. Another man told me that it’s “writing in real
time.” So “he mowed the lawn and went to his accounting firm” is still telling;
you’d have to say, “The blisters on his hands threaten to burst as he rolled
the lawn mower back into the garage. He shoved it in and slammed down the door,
fumbling for the keys. John yanked open his car door, shouting, ‘Honey! I’m
going to work!’” Someone else said it was about using the senses. I once read
an unintentionally humorous blog about how you should “kill your darlings,” being
about why you should literally kill off your characters, while my high school
teacher explained it as being willing to cut things you love for the good of
the story. And if you get into any discussion about writer’s block and whether
it exists or not, you are very likely to find that the looming threat is
something different to everyone.
You can’t stop words from
developing their own personal meaning, no matter how clearly you draw the line.
We learn by circumstance and rarely do we actually look up the real definition.
Yet how much do we allow for evolution and how much do we force a constant
meaning?
Take the word “irony” as
our most popular example.
The original definition of
irony meant sarcasm, yet no one uses it for that anymore. If you do, in fact,
you’re going to sound bizarre, noticeable, and it’s possible no one will have
any idea of what you’re trying to say.
“That’s ironic.”
You have situational
irony, in which someone does something with unexpected results, or dramatic
irony, in which the observer has knowledge that a speaker doesn’t, making his
words more significant to the observer (usually used in literature and
performance art).
But then you have the
unofficial meaning which is often either an amusing coincidence, or, as I tend
to use it, hypocrisy. Some use it as meaning an unfortunate event.
It’s a big pet peeve for
many, and I ask the honest question on how much should we care?
Do we need its original
meaning?
Well, I have found myself
needing a synonym for sarcastic every now and again. Caustic is the closest
word I can usually make work. Sometimes disdain or cynicism, but often those
aren’t quite right. Facetious, can be useful, but it has its own connotation too.
Yet I don’t think we have
another word to reference when an action results in something unforeseen. I
also don’t feel like that comes up a lot. I try to avoid using “ironically”
because of how much focus it gets whether it’s correct or not, but there have
been a few times in which I’ve thought it was best, like when I talk about how
much I hate using computers and people argue, “But you’re on yours all of the
time!”
“It’s called a sad irony.”
“It’s called a sad irony.”
Should we allow it to
evolve to this new meaning? Coincidence, I don’t think, needs another synonym.
Amusing accident, chance, contradiction… But, I’m not sure that quite covers
it. As I said, when I’m compelled to use ‘irony’ without thinking about it, it
tends to mean hypocritical. “Ironically enough, he is constantly offended at
other people getting offended.” And many people use it in reference to a karmic
act when “Susie married Jon for his money and he lost his medical degree two
days after the wedding.” These may be correct at times, but usually that’s a
coincidence and not the amusing kind.
There’s another word for
that: “Schadenfreude.” Thought that is also technically not English, an also is
about the feeling of seeing someone
in pain over a stupid action.
I am too young to know
when this obsession with “irony” started, but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d
say it was Alanis Morissette’s song “Ironic,” in which, as many say, everything
she sings about is an amusing coincidence not actual irony. Some suggest that
the irony of the song is that none of it is actually ironic. Who knows. My
bigger issue is what does it matter?
And I don’t mean that
ironically.
When do we allow for words
to grow and when do we demand that we use them in the way officials have agreed
they were intended? For that matter, when are we using a word in a new and
effective way versus when we’re just using it wrong? How do we know that words
mean what we think they do without checking the definition for everything we
say? When do we try and listen to someone’s point instead of contradicting them
over a misspoken phrase? And when do we stand strong and demand the respect of
a word so that it doesn’t just get muddled, meaningless, and replaced?
I don’t have the answer. I
raised the question so you can think about it for me. Let me know what you find
out.
