A Growing Vocabulary
Posted on Mar 11, 2010
The words of the English language make a fascinating collection. Of course, our lexicon is not stagnant but instead is continually expanding. Occasionally, our words themselves are a collection, as in the word Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis, which names the lung condition potentially arising from silicate dust inhalation. I saved an article from years ago by Brad Herzog he called, Geeks, Boob-tubers and Doohickeys in which he shared the history of some of his favorite words. Some of those words have become universal after being transferred to other languages. While working across the street from the UCLA campus, I discovered that the university student store was renowned to be one of the most popular tourist stops in the entire United States (especially for international travelers)! Apparently, people all over the world want to wear the UCLA acronym. In Mr. Herzog’s opinion, UCLA cannot hold a candle to “OK” in the universal words category. OK (as in AOK) surfaced in 1839 and became famous in 1840 for a different reason when President “Old Kinderhook” Van Buren ran for reelection. Today, you could almost carry on a meaningful conversation with a foreign tourist in the UCLA student store by repeating, “UCLA…OK” with a variety of well-timed inflections!
The American Dialect Society has been keeping track of words, phrases, acronyms and word usage for years. Their book, America in So Many Words , lists words back to 1750. The society has selected “tweet,” currently used to mean the act of posting on the website Twitter, as the 2009 Word of the Year; by the way their word of the decade is “Google.” Clearly, these are words among many others with alternate meanings, which make the English language a confusing one for non-natives. In light of the unusually snowy winter experienced by the eastern half of the United States this year, it would be small comfort to know that the word “blizzard” arose in 1825 to describe a knockdown blow, not a snowstorm. Of course the society associates “teddy bears” with President Theodore Roosevelt and “sideburns” with Union General Ambrose Burnside of Civil War fame. However, you may not have known that President Jefferson was the first to use the word “belittle” back in 1782 and he was apparently the first to re-apply the anatomical term “artery” to our nation’s rivers.
Often in the English language words evolve in meaning. “Deadline” really meant it when Civil War prison guards marked the dirt. “Skyscrapers” were birds and balls before they were buildings, and “pioneers” were advanced laborers who traveled in front of their army units before the pioneer spirit became more internally motivated. For children every day presents new words, new definitions and new spellings. Their task is especially difficult in today’s culture when lazy spelling and word usage is common. Sharing with your children the etymology of a word or discovering together the history of a word’s usage is a wonderful adventure, which also shares the message that one’s vocabulary is never finished growing. Together, may your words take on new significance and importance.
