It’s all true. Every word I've written has been plagiarized ... from the dictionary. I have only rearranged their order. These days, dictionaries have gone the way of encyclopedias and the thesaurus. Even spell check will soon be a relic, to be replaced by the dreaded AI. The world doesn’t hold still for a minute.
Words come and go faster than the last great idea I had. Some
are on life support while others are screaming their first breath in the maternity
ward.
The sentinels at the gate can’t agree on what to include. The
Cambridge Dictionary added over 6,000 new words this year while Merriam-Webster
allowed a mere 370. I think the lexicographers ought to have a softball game
and settle the matter or shout each other under the table.
Words are wondrous things. I can’t say enough about them. A few squiggles on the page or on the lips can be life-changing. The marriage vow: I do or Hell, no, I won't go.
There was a time when the well-turned phrase would get you re-invited to the next dinner party. Ask Henry James. I doubt if he ever ate at home.
Up until WWI, speechifying was conflated with intellect. During that crime against humanity, soldiers lost limbs and long-winded phrases died in the trenches. A generation was lost along with polysyllabic words; staccato jazz translated to clipped sentences.
Concision entered poetry. Literature became stripped of frippery the same way the Bauhaus School brought unornamented Modernism to architecture. The old standard of florid sentences in which the subject was separated from the predicate by pages of commas and semicolons was no longer considered a thing of beauty.
Even if Faulkner didn't get the memo, Hemingway made brevity the new standard. It doesn’t get any shorter than his short story: Baby shoes for sale; never used.
When did minimalism become such a virtue? Are we a lazy people or just in a hurry on our way to nowhere? Is this payback for long-winded bloviating; those orators in the halls of Congress or men of the cloth intoning everything God has to say?
Now the pendulum has swung and some fine words are hanging by their thumbs. LOL. The internet has us writing in fluent acronyms. IMHO, this is a small step for man and a giant step on the wrong road for mankind. We may end up conversing in shrugs, nods and grunts.
On the other hand, nothing is more democratic than language. Each word is an agreed-upon utterance rising organically by popular consent. Words morph from other words and also die from exhaustion. Awe used to be my religion. Now it has become limp from overuse; an awesome shame.
Brevity has shortened our perceptual span. Linguists believe that language precedes thought. Fewer words limit ideas. A broad vocabulary trains the mind to think in more nuanced ways. In less than a year our native tongue has been demeaned by simplistic terms and name-calling. Deceit leads to debasement.
T.S. Eliot described poetry as a raid on the inarticulate. We are all poets and we struggle to capture those feelings for which words fail us. Let us find ways to express our vehemence against this tide, even as we revivify language to support and find soulful connections with one another.