A word about words

My love of words began when I was very young. My parents were devoted readers who filled our home with books. I started reading at 3, something my mother reminded me of just yesterday.

Growing up in a military family meant constant travel, including three tours in Germany. Because of that, I was encouraged to learn foreign languages, eventually studying French and German and attending a German university. One of my courses at the University of Stuttgart explored the origins of language, including how ancient words like mother and father have recognizable relatives across languages thousands of years later. That class revealed something profound: Words are artifacts of human history, carrying the fingerprints of every generation.

Words as time capsules
Every word carries a story. Some are whimsical, like serendipity, coined by Horace Walpole after a tale called “The Three Princes of Serendip,” using an old name for Sri Lanka.

Others are somber, like melancholy, born from the Greek melas (black) and khole (bile). Ancient Greek physicians believed emotions were governed by four bodily fluids, or humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile (choler) and black bile (melancholy). Illness was thought to occur when the fluids were out of balance. Each humor was associated with an element: blood (air), phlegm (water), yellow bile (fire) and black bile (earth).

Words shape our emotional experiences. The concept of linguistic relativity holds that language can influence how people perceive and think about the world. For example, a person who knows the word petrichor, the earthy scent after rain, might savor that moment differently than someone who simply calls it “a nice smell.”

Languages can also structure concepts such as time and space differently. Some languages routinely use cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) instead of left and right, and research has found that speakers of some such languages maintain a strong awareness of cardinal direction. Some Inuit and Yupik languages have extensive vocabularies for snow and ice, although their grammatical structure makes simple word-count comparisons with English misleading.

The evolution of language
Language shifts, mutates and adapts. English is a mosaic of influences. From its Anglo-Saxon roots come words like bread, house and love. Norse seafarers brought us words like sky, anger and window (“wind-eye”), while the French influence is seen in words like beauty and courage. Latin and Greek dominate much of the vocabulary of science, medicine and philosophy.

Each time a word moves into a different culture, it can offer new ways of expressing ideas. When English adopted liberty, ultimately from the Latin liber, meaning “free,” it gained another way to express ideas of freedom. The English word democracy traces to the Greek demokratia, referring to rule by the people.

Language evolves through necessity
The digital age birthed words like emoji, hashtag and unfriend. Older words are transformed: awful once carried meanings associated with inspiring awe or reverence, while cloud developed from an Old English word referring to a mass of rock or a hill.

Words as identity
Words signal belonging to a region, a profession or a generation.
The word y’all, which my autocorrect kept changing to Yall until I found a way to put y’all into my iPhone’s dictionary, is a cultural marker of the Southern United States. Schadenfreude is borrowed from German and describes enjoyment of someone else’s misfortune.

Some words are considered difficult to translate precisely because their meanings carry cultural associations that may take several words to express in English. The Portuguese saudade expresses a deep, nostalgic longing for something or someone that may never return. It conveys more than simply “missing” someone or something.

The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi finds aesthetic value in imperfection, impermanence and simplicity. The Southern African concept of ubuntu is often expressed through the idea “I am because we are,” emphasizing human interconnectedness.

The Finnish word sisu describes determination and perseverance in the face of adversity. English has words such as courage, grit and perseverance, but none captures precisely the same collection of ideas.

One of my favorite foreign words, which some English speakers have adopted, is the German word Gemütlichkeit. It conveys a sense of comfort, friendliness and pleasant sociability. Having spent several of my college years in Munich, the word makes me think of beer gardens with “oom-pah-pah” music, giant mugs of beer, close friends, laughter, huge salty pretzels with hot mustard and sunshine filtered through the airy shade of larch trees.

Why etymology matters

Etymology, the study of word origins, is more than academic trivia. It reveals how humans have thought, felt and interacted across centuries. When we learn that quarantine comes from the Italian quaranta giorni (40 days), we glimpse historical attempts to control disease. When we discover that salary comes from the Latin salarium, a word connected to salt, we see traces of salt’s importance in the ancient world.
Etymology connects us to our ancestors.

The living future of words
Language will continue to evolve. New technologies create new vocabulary; shifting cultures redefine old terms. Words shape the way we live. They influence emotion, identity and culture. They are the threads that weave human experience into something shareable.

Every word we speak carries a hidden history, a trail of migrations, inventions and emotions. Words are fossils of human experience, and when we examine them closely, they reveal how deeply language shapes our lives.

Numbers as words
A sign of the times: Numbers have increasingly become vocabulary. Gen Alpha uses the slang term “67,” pronounced “six-seven,” as a largely nonsensical expression without a single established meaning. They sometimes use it to annoy adults, such as shouting “six-seven” as the answer to math problems or teacher roll calls, or as an answer to a basic question like, “How are you?”
In slang, 404, based on the internet “not found” error code, can refer to someone who is clueless or foolish, as in, “He’s so 404” or “My brain is 404.”

Contranyms
Sometimes words are just downright contrary. A contranym is a word that can have two opposite or contradictory meanings.

Take dust. You can dust a cake by adding a light coating of sugar, or dust the furniture by removing dust.

Overlook can mean to supervise or inspect something, but it can also mean to fail to notice it.

Fast can mean moving quickly, but something held fast is firmly fixed in place.
Then there are some linguistic oddities that aren’t technically contranyms but are still fun to ponder:

We park on the driveway and drive on the parkway.

How can a fat chance and a slim chance mean essentially the same thing?

He left his jacket when he left the party.

Words hold our memories, shape our identities and tether us to every culture and generation before us, reminding us that human experience is shared, layered and ever-evolving. Words can hurt or help, so try not to go all 404 and keep your sassy six-sevens to yourself.

Tamela is a proofreader and book editor; she hosts paint parties for adults, art and drama camp for kids, and is the art teacher at May River Montessori. www.tamelamaxim.com www.artposseproductions.com