Have you ever been on these leadership courses that modern workplaces love so much? One I attended started with a teamwork exercise.
The course leader made five of us stand, shoulder to shoulder, arms in front, forefingers extended. She laid a garden cane across our fingers and the one rule was that everyone had to maintain contact with the cane.
She asked us to slowly lower the cane to the floor.
It sounds simple but was a hilarious disaster. With everyone trying to “maintain contact” it went up instead of down. It was high at one end and low at the other so slipped off. It took a lot of talking to get it right.
The crux is the definition of “slowly”. Some would have taken a full minute to lower the cane slowly, others reckoned slowly lowering takes three seconds.
Your definition of words is unique to you.
How big is a stone before it’s a boulder? How wide is a wood before it’s a forest? How long ago must a burial be before grave robbing becomes archaeology?
When I phone my bank and I’m put on hold and told “your call is important to us and will be answered soon”: my idea of an acceptable “soon” is 12 seconds.
Your personal definitions can be crystallised by experiences.
I recall, as a young man on holiday in Spain, being stuck in a lift. We were trapped for 45 minutes and it was hot and claustrophobic. A portly, middle-aged German chap had a panic attack and lost control of his bowels.
Since then, I don’t accept minor smells as “pungent”. I have experienced pungent.
To add some stark seriousness, my father, in his understated way that took me years to fully understand, said being in a slit trench while the Luftwaffe bombed his airfield taught him what is “important”.
A linguist would call idiosyncratic word definitions “referential indeterminacy”. Words mean one thing to one person, something slightly different to another.
In one home a mug of tea might be what another family calls a cup of tea.
How red is medium-rare? How brown is a well-fired cake? One person will say the sea is aquamarine; another calls it turquoise.
I think a baby is less than three months old. After that it’s a child.
How long is long hair? How much money is rich? When do memories become history?
It’s one of the great things about the English language: you use it to your own taste.
Word of the week
Nimiety (noun)
More than is necessary; an overabundance. EG: “You could argue that having myriad different ways to express myriad things denotes a nimiety of words in the English language.”
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
