A Consideration of Words

This afternoon as I was driving home from the library I was thinking about words. I described something as splendid this past week. On second thought, splendid probably wasn't the right word to use when describing your admiration for a regional vernacular. Something that is splendid is covered in splendor, is it not? Like the grass covered with the final glow of the sun as evening falls.

Sometimes I want to say that a thing is terrific. But then I pause because it isn't terrific. There is no terror associated with the crayon drawings that my son produces during his daily quiet rest time.

Doesn't fantastic mean that something is too much to be believed? It is a fantasy, which is the equivalent of what Napoleon Dynamite promised his classmates, that he would make their wildest dreams come true. I check with IMDB. Was it Napoleon who promised that, or was it Pedro? My hopes are dashed. I remembered it wrong. Pedro made the promise; Napoleon only suggested it to him.

Here's one that Napoleon actually did use. Copied from the famous quotes page on IMDB.com: “That suit, it's... it's incredible.” Doesn't incredible mean that something really is not to be believed? As in, my credulity can only be stretched so far?

Smashing? I know I'm getting really British here, but could smashing mean that all the matter in the universe is so overwhelmed that it explodes under the weight of existence? Something that is wonderful if full of wonder. Something that is overwhelming in actual fact cannot be borne.

Impossible? Well, I think impossible is pretty straight-forward, even though it is usually used to describe things that really aren't impossible.

Can you think of any others?

I was about to quote something familiar which was said by C.S. Lewis, and that I'm fairly certain I have quoted in these pages before about the death of words. A quick internet search finds references to an essay with that title which I have never read. Lewis also writes about “verbicide, the murder of a word...” in Studies In Words, which I have read. But in thumbing through the introduction to Studies in Words this evening (for it is Monday evening as I write), I find something else to quote instead.

After hearing one chapter of this book when it was still a lecture, a man remarked to me 'You have made me afraid to say anything at all'. I know what he meant. Prolonged thought about the words which we ordinarily use to think with can produce a momentary aphasia. I think it is to be welcomed. It is well we should become aware of what we are doing when we speak, of the ancient, fragile, and (well used) immensely potent instruments that words are. (6, Lewis's formatting maintained)

Isn't it wonderful how human Lewis is? That in the middle of a book that would seem technical to most people, he inserts something as regular as an anecdote, but an anecdote that ties in with the matter at hand? He goes on to describe something similar to what I have been describing in my own undereducated way above, by which I mean to say that Lewis speaks with the authority of study, while I speak only from the considerations of my own mind, not having taken the time or trouble to find authoritative meanings for any of the words I have been pondering.

Inflation is one of the commonest [forms of verbicide]; those who taught us to say awfully for 'very', tremendous for 'great', sadism for 'cruelty', and unthinkable for 'undesireable' were verbicides. Another way is verbiage, by which I here mean the use of a word as a promise to pay which is never going to be kept. The use of significant as if it were an absolute, and with no intention of ever telling us what the thing is significant of is an example.... (7)

This is exactly the sort of thing I have been thinking about this week, and it is exactly the sort of exaggerative usage that I am continually guilty of, almost to the extent that I am “afraid to say anything at all.” Is there a whole lot of chance that I am going to weed these superlatives out of my speech? No. Is there much chance that I will weed them out of my writing? Probably not. But I am still going to be caught up short whenever terrific or terrible are the words I feel compelled to choose.