2000-09-15 - 16:19 MDT

September 15, 2000

Obssession ?

Uh, where did the days go between the first and today ? Oh well, can't back up. I latched onto the dictionary today to look up a word. Fatal error for me -- words to me are like potato chips or peanuts to others, I can't stop at just one. I have dallied in the realm of words since I first opened Mom's dictionary as a kid.

Didn't really take me long to see that often, people did not understand the words they were speaking and the listeners further confused the issue by misunderstanding those words and replying in words they didn't know the true definition of, either.

I also saw that body language and facial expression had a great deal to do with what understanding should be put on the spoken word.

I began to appreciate, "Dead Pan" comedy, especially the comedians who could dead pan it and use their voice with no expression at all either. Also I began to appreciate the good actors, those who could use their voice, body language and facial expressions to convince an audience that before them, there stood the character being portrayed - living and breathing.

So time passed, word following word, meaning after meaning understood with the hope in the back of my mind that some of what I was looking at would remain in my mind to be used at an appropriate time.

Very early Etymology started to have meaning to me, seeing the origin of words, the derivations from Latin and Greek and their different spellings which led to bastardization into other languages - sometimes even the meanings became different over the centuries, even with some words having a flip-floppedm meaning. Then languages of the sub-continent, India etc., turned out to also have words in our language -- words with new wheels and paint jobs but with very ancient ancestors.

My beloved Angles and Saxons and the Germanic and Nordic people whose four letter words still enable me to be very vehement and concise -- spoken or written, still keeping in mind that "work" is a four letter word as is "love" too, etymology might be a bit different -- but so many things are defined by four letter words, life, help, gripe, hate, fire. Maybe some one should make (compile) a dictionary of four letter words -- for adult use only.

The mis-application of words, "I love grape jelly." Love? what, ya gonna marry it ? Let me "see" it, when what is meant is put it in my hands to feel, shake, knock on, smell, taste or whatever.

Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, looking up a common medical term to make sure I am using it right demands that I no longer spend the whole damn day in that wonderful book.

Oh well, a loose mind is easily lost and gets so confused it can't find it's way home.

Maybe I had something to say to myself today that is more important, but after treading the steps of understanding by means of "The Grand Book Of Lingo Knowledge," the wish to understand and truly understand people and the real meaning from what they are saying still remains a prime obsession.

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