Tag Archives: trusty

Words are interesting and they have the power to convey thoughts.  They are, however, a double-edged sword and can be used for good and bad.  A lot of fun can be had with them, too.

Words:  I love them, but what are they?  Initially I found it difficult to come up with a definition.  This is because, as a man of pragmatism, I was thinking in terms of tangible concepts.  For instance, the written word teapot and the spoken equivalent are physically two very different things, neither of which resembles a teapot, but both nonetheless convey the same meaning through different senses.  I nearly grabbed my trusty Collins dictionary (Millennium Edition) in an attempt to solve the conundrum and then it struck me that the essence of a word is a name or label for an idea, a concept or object.  There you go!  It just goes to show I am no wordsmith – perhaps a wordjones at best.

Words unspoken

The beauty of language, especially the English language with its particularly rich vocabulary, is that you can communicate in nuances.  Sometimes you don’t even have to say something explicitly to convey an idea; you can read between the lines.

I am not always straightforward in my communication, particularly when it comes to expressing feelings.  This may have something to do with being a man (oops, the sexism alarm has just gone off – back in a tick), but I don’t always find it easy to express myself directly.  I wrote en email recently and found myself writing the “gaps between the lines” in places in the first draft, sort of hoping the lines themselves would be understood.  The final version was more direct but still wishy washy in areas but it was all meant in a positive way and judging by the response, taken in that way.

In a way this is like the language equivalent of shadows or negative space.  You might call it unguage – sentences that skirt around the issue so closely as to convey the intended thought without saying it explicitly.  It is also useful in the politics of Project Management where the insertion of a simple phrase like “I understand from our telephone conversation that…” can soften a statement that might otherwise read as a blatant accusation, even if it is meant as such.

Etymology and perspectives

I find etymologies interesting and these are often closely related to cultural thinking.  They say eyes are the window to the soul, but much about a country’s culture can be gleaned from the language.  Take telling the time as an example.  In Dutch (and similarly in German) 4:30 would be “half five”.  Perhaps it is because both the Dutch and Germans are very punctual, hard-working and progressive and look forwards in time.  In Britain we are very proud of our heritage and of the great figures of history with their origins in this country: Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, James Watt.  The Industrial Revolution started here and it was the birthplace of railways among many other things.  We look to our past and call it “half past four” or “half four” for short.

Language of the soul

Back to the tangible, there is nothing intrinsically special about the sounds coming from my mouth or the symbols you see on your computer screen or in print.  To a non-human both are simply background noise and it requires another human mind to make sense of them.  After all, language is in essence the transfer of thought from one brain to another and it is truly remarkable.

Remarkable though the brain is, its thoughts are capable of both good and bad and so the brains projection onto others through words has the potential for good and bad too.  Words are not only beautiful and remarkable, but powerful and potent.  The wrong words at the wrong time can cause misunderstandings, rows and even wars.  Powerful though they are, words alone, it seems, don’t convey thoughts perfectly and body language plays a key part.  It is reckoned you lose the majority of the meaning when talking over the phone, simply because of missed body language cues.  An even smaller percentage of the original meaning is left in written communication, as both the body language and tone are stripped away.  Text messages (SMS) are notorious for that.

A comedy of sorts

Words can be used to make people happy, either intentionally through nice messages and jokes, or accidentally.  Some words are simply great because of their sound alone: Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Moussa Koussa, floccinaucinihilipilification…

Autocorrect features in word processors or the iPhone can produce some funny but sometimes disturbing and unsavoury results.  Do a Google search for “iPhone autocorrect” (if you’re over the age of majority), but not until you’ve finished reading and sharing this article with all your friends! 😉  I used to do a lot of report writing, because I did a lot of Project Management type work in Defence a few years ago.  This would require input from various disciplines, including Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.  As one of the client’s primary contacts I had the dubious honour of collating everybody’s text and would have to proof-read other people’s input and would come across some funny sentences.

The word luminaires isn’t recognised by Microsoft Word’s default spell checker and is automatically “corrected” to luminaries, which can make for interesting reading.

Technology can’t always be blamed though and some of the best spelling mistakes are a result of human error.  A sign on the door of a convenience store once read “Mined the step”.  Whoa!  Get the bomb squad in!  In a risk assessment I once read the phrase “avian bird flue”, presumably referring to H5N1.  However this conjured up images of a vertical pipe conveying birds – birds of the avian variety, no less… whatever they are.

But my all-time favourite came from a condition survey report an old colleague wrote for an old Victorian workhouse that had been converted into offices.  The original building was symmetrical and had two entrances side-by-side, two staircases to sleeping quarters and so on.  This was intended to segregate the different workers, male and female.  One line in the report read, “…a separate door for different sex workers…” and with the stroke of a virtual pen he had changed the historic use of the house to a brothel.

Double Entendre

The picture shows a box I found in the yoghurt aisle at Asda today.  Yes, there is such a thing as the yoghurt aisle at Asda Bedminster, I kid you not.  The box has openings in it, making it look like a face.  The text “tear here” instructs the user to rip away the front panel as indicated by the arrows.  But look at the positioning of the arrows and they look like a schematic representation of floods of tears streaming from the eyes.  It is a double entendre of sorts, where crying and ripping and tearing are combined into a single object.  One picture, a thousand words.

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