War and Words
I have for quite some time kept a dictionary handy; primarily because I’m the world’s worst speller. If a word has a strange phonic or more than one syllable, I can routinely mess it up. Occasionally, while checking the spelling of a word, I’ll have a look at the word’s ‘dictionary meaning’. In so doing, I have been amazed at how much ambiguity has crept into our language over the years. I guess that’s one reason why we have so many lawyers—and they have a dictionary all their own. On top of that, the verbicide rate seems to be as bad as the homicide rate in some parts of the country; there could very well be a connection between the two.
This brings us to Humpty Dumpty, and the playing around with words….
In his book, The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis declared, “Language is not an infallible guide, but it contains, with all its defects, a good deal of stored insight and experience. If you begin by flouting it, it has a way of avenging itself later on.”
It was this part of Humpty’s literary legacy that C.S. Lewis was referring to when he warned, “We had better not follow Humpty Dumpty in making words mean whatever we please.”
Good advice!
/fl