Word Play

English isn’t the easiest language to master, and here’s a humorous look at the reason why.

How does someone just learning the language understand that the bandage was “wound” around the “wound,” that the farm was used to “produce” “produce,” the dump was so full that it had to “refuse” more “refuse,’ and that we must “polish” the “Polish” furniture or tell someone that in order to “lead” they must first get the lead out?

Now to really get cute, we could say the soldier decided to “desert “his “dessert” in the “desert,” or we could advise someone that there is no time like the “present” to “present” the “present.”

In English there is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; nor is there apple or pine in a pineapple.  English muffins weren’t invented in England nor were French fries invented in France.  Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.

Did you know that bawd, concubine, coquette, courtesan, harlot, shrew, termagant, wench and witch at one time applied to both sexes?  Yet today these terms are the exclusive domain of women.

Much of our language is chauvinistic because women have for so long been second-class citizens, which is why courtesan, coquette, concubine et al shifted in meaning to refer to women only sometime in the late 1600s.  Similar manifestations hold true with certain derogatory words in usage today.

In pre-modern times, the aristocracy and the nobles lived in cities, which is why many disparaging terms and words received their meaning by ascribing certain qualities to non-city people.  Villain comes from rustic, heathen from country-dweller and boor originally meant a farmer.  Even the word bumpkin when preceded by country has now become redundant.

We take English for granted.  But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.   And only in English do we have noses that run and feet that smell while we park our car on the driveway and drive our car on the parkway.

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise-guy, are opposites?  You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language when a house can burn up as it burns down; where one can fill in a form by filling it out and where an alarm goes off by going on.  And why is it that cough, though, rough and through don’t rhyme, but pony and bologna do?

At the top of the commentary I wrote that English was “quirky” language.  Well perhaps fascinating is a better term, to wit:  There’s a two-letter English word that has more meanings than well…you can “make-up” your own mind regarding the word “UP.”

We all understand “UP”, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake “UP?”  At a meeting, why does a topic come “UP”?   Why do we speak “UP” and why are politicians “UP” for re-election and why is it “UP “to the secretary to write “UP “a report?

We call “UP “our friends, we brighten “UP” a room and polish “UP” the silver.  We warm “UP” the leftovers and clean “UP” the kitchen.  We lock “UP” the house and fix “UP “the old car.  At other times the word has a special meaning when people stir “UP” trouble, line “UP” for tickets, work “UP” an appetite, and think “UP” excuses.

To be dressed is one thing, but we dress “UP” for special occassions.  A drain must be opened “UP” because it is stopped “UP.”  And the local grocer opens “UP” his store in the morning and then closes it “UP” at night.  All in all, we seem to be pretty mixed-up “about “UP.”

A thousand years from now historians and archeologists will discover terms and phrases that will surely leave them puzzled, e.g. did the man take the bus, or did the bus take the man?  We have a fascinating language, and as English becomes more prevalent the world over, our language will expand even faster as it incorporates words and phrases from the four corners of the globe—if a globe can indeed have “four corners.”

Quote of the Day: “Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English.  It means they know another language.”—H. Jackson Brown