word

This morning somebody used a word I was not familiar with and so I looked it up, mostly because I liked the way it sounded and also the way it felt to say it, though at first I did think it was a typo as is often the case in emails. Maybe they forgot a letter? But more importantly, because a word unknown is an odd thing. Now, many people, and I know who you are, will skip right past a word they do not know.  How many of us cart around a dictionary? and there is the time thing, a moment spent reading is a gem in this life, and I'm not going to give a frowny face to anybody who is spending any time reading and slides right on past perfunctory or whose eyes cross at embourgeoisement.  Plus there is all the new language or pseudo language or Ice T language. My intention is not to get too William Safire-y here, the right wing bent (see also: inclination) toward rigidity and delineating what is what and what is (yo word), because I say so, not, deftly stacking the word world onto metal shelves, slamming the door, there! take that! But the truth is if a word is not used within one's sphere how are you supposed to know? 


Our world is expanding; the universe is, as I was told this weekend, like a big clear bubble that is also a mirror on the inside, so what we see is a reflection of infinity (actually, he said that we are like that girl who keeps looking over her shoulder into a mirror and sees the mirror in front of her, what is that word mom? and so as the bubble grows we are getting smaller, in fact, we aren't as big as we think we are.) And as it grows we create more connections, more ways to understand what's out there. I am sure there is an app (anyone over the age of 60 just thought huh? a what?) that can accommodate the search to broaden an understanding of the teenager who, standing at the open fridge said something that sounded like they were choking on a chicken bone, but no. Their little sister shrieked and their friend hooted and you had nary a clue. They are speaking a language you don't understand and they are speaking it to you and the dusty Webster elevating the dog kibble bowl ain't gonna help. Time for google. 


Which I did and chose something called the new urban dictionary and for all of fifteen seconds I was amused, bemused, then the usage became just too street for me, too hangin wid da homies; not to not get it, but to appreciate the culture of one hundred words for twat. Maybe it was dismay at one I really liked, imagined using, could see myself calling to the cat or comforting a child here little tweedlebug but whoa, that is not what tweedlebug means. Why take such a cute word and have it mean that? not that that, sometimes called down there, or if your kid goes to Montessori and you are on the reality track, as in no Santa or Easter Bunny (and why not the Bun? he's all about the reality of birth and death and doing the big nasty) it is v-a-g-i-n-a as in, Now Lilly, stop scratching your vagina with a loud emphasis on vagina so every mother at drop-off hears and understands that you are on the reality track, is a bad thing. The v can use some lovin' lingo, maybe just not during the previews prior to Wall-E. We all know the c-word but do we know why? well it is the sound, the hard c and the base uh and the finality of the t, but before the t the n drawn out like a whisper so that it makes you really want to lean down and hear it all, every last not nice, not complimentary, every last bad-assed syllable, and you get the picture. 


What is good about language and what is bad about language is that there is no black and white and there is no tidy scaffolding or a way to hold it all up and in one place. Language is willy-nilly, the very embodiment of that word, also cattywampus: apt to be turned on its head (oh Alice, there is that rabbit again). Like many people I am a collector of words (what is the word for that?) and so truly get excited about finding a lickspittle or a bergamot (really really love those -ot endings, just so je ne sais quoi), or a confundus (which is a made-up Harry Potter word thus as I'm writing this a dotted red line appeared out of nowhere and unbeckoned alerting me that I misspelled it or that it doesn't exist or that I am confunded in my choice). As a collector of words that darn red line appears a lot, frequently, often, oh the choices. I choose to ignore it a lot, frequently, and often. Looking back up the page there are sixteen red underlined words, including unbeckoned (how can that not be a word?) and the aforementioned tweedlebug. But google led me to the urban dictionary so take that oh spellcheck in the sky, it is in the lexicon of the tweetsters, the homies, somebody, and maybe, perhaps they have no clue what it even means. Who gets to say? Maybe it is just too twee for my Miscrosoftian spellcheck.


The thing is, language is alive and it is alive because of the words and what they point to. When I was in school I did not learn language or words because of any frickin' or even friggin' textbook. Forget the grumpy oldster of sentence diagramming (How can you be so Dr. Evil?) and pronouns and all those mean seventh grade words that end in -nym. There is little use chasing it down and clamping the jar over it, capturing it on the stale flat white of a page, or hoping to keep it flickering on and off in the dark, despite the holes poked into the lid. A word needs to be used, to fly out there in the air or settle softly upon the page, beat its little self against a window or hang on the corner with its homies, do something for chrissakes, besides lie flattened and pressed between thousands of pages. So I'm all for the twee and the twitter, new twitter and sweet little old lady twitter bustling over the roses, and the twitter of the birds, talking to themselves after a long and wearisome but not without a certain joy! flight, the migration break en route to a place embedded within the memory of wings.


("speaking a language you don't understand and they are speaking it to you" is from the Coldplay song Talk.  The line "how can you be so Dr. Evil" is Jay-Z)