Way of the word

I like words. I enjoy the way they, by certain uses and arrangements, convey a whole range of communication. I have enjoyed the fun to be had in word play and take a pride that I am derided and groaned at for my almost habitual tendency to create puns, malapropisms, spoonerisms and other playful devices.

I can remember at an early age wanting to know more of them and can recall learning a few and using them to expand my vocabulary. A very simple early word was acme, always the brand name on any item purchased by Wiley Coyote in his relentless pursuit of the Road Runner. I assumed innocently it was a short catchy word used by the cartoonist, but I was delighted that it was a Greek word for the highest. Nothing but the best for Wiley.

I now knew that words came from somewhere and so began a lifelong if not thorough fascination with meanings and origins. But the process of word creation is still alive. Words are still being created by the same processes that created the current stock. Naturally in the process of creation and development, there are casualties. Words do fall by the wayside, no longer to be on the tip of the tongues.

I hear a certain grumpiness from some quarters that the English language is in decline. The vocabulary warriors are keen to point out when they feel a word has been misused or that the way we speak is deteriorating and is no way like it used to be. But it surely has always been the case. The English language has been bashed and battered, altered and augmented from all manner of invasions and creations. I would not have the wonderful if limited vocabulary that I do have had it not been for the innovation, invention and influence of others both near and far. New technologies are bringing about changes to the way and manner in which we speak. Not only are words changing, but the way that we actually make utterance alters too. Declining regional accents are making way for a more universal ergot.

Apart from being discarded, words change their meanings. A case of adapt and survive. Although the words are only passive in the process. St Paul's Cathedral was once described as being "….awful, artificial and amusing." Sir Christopher Wren might have felt justly insulted, unless the meanings of those words are seen within a contempory meaning at the time of their utterance. The speaker was actually meaning was declaring, to Wren’s obvious smiles of self satisfaction, that the building was "awesome, clever and thought-provoking."

Today, to describe something as awful would bring about a degree of approbation, such is the current meaning. Clever people, perhaps of a criminal bent, may use artifice towards their ends. Queen Victoria may well have been disappointed that the subject she considered herself not amused by was simply a dull and shallow one with no intention of making her rock with laughter. (This supposed quotation was attributed to Queen Victoria by Caroline Holland in Notebooks of a Spinster Lady, 1919. Holland attests that Victoria made the remark in 1900, but supplies no details of the circumstances but by that time she may well have had not a lot to laugh at.)

Words do change over time to start meaning something else. These are two current examples I have noticed in television news

Both of these two examples are to do with achieving success. The first is result which is being used in the sporting sense by commentators and participants to mean a win.

“We are hoping for a result tomorrow,” is the oft quoted line. Only the context and the speaker may vary. What they of course mean is a win. There will always be a result unless the match is abandoned. This is the way that words go. There was little word, namely win or won ( after a result has been obtained of course) which thought it had a place for ever, but for how long?

In a similar way I feel the word justice is going the same way.

“All we want is justice”. I have the feeling that what is actually wanted is a win.

Poor old win. Attacked in two contexts. Will it survive the onslaught? Or will its usage be done for or simply expanded in the thesaurus.

There will be others. After all words are used in their millions by millions everyday, in speech and writing. Survival is a tough business and there are bound to be more casualties. Some will sink without trace, some will change and adapt and new ones will vocabularise daily. Just as watchable as all those nature progrtammes with their daily battles of life and death. Simply listen to hear the struggle of words and be happy in the thought that no blood is spilt and no real hurt is done.