Words

Being an author, you would expect that I like words. Actually, I've always loved words. I can't remember a time when I couldn't read and if I came across a word that I didn't know, I definitely had to find out all about it. I enjoy discovering the meaning, the pronunciation, the origin of a new word. Pretty nerdy, huh? So, vocabulary---that's as interesting to me as travel or hobbies or celebrities are to other people.

 

The advice for writers is to not bog your writing down in big words that aren't familiar to most readers.  That makes sense to me, especially because I write fiction about everyday folks.  Unless you hang out with college professors or Sheldon from Big Bang, in your everyday interactions you probably don't toss around a lot of big words.  It's just plain old talk.  For example, in the beginning of  No Normal Day IV, Travelers when Emily wakes up on a cold morning and speaks to her dog, would she say---"Good morning my furry canine companion. Do you need to urinate?" or would she (or if it was you) say, "Gotta pee, Girl? Me, too."  And while below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, blood congealing, heavy with sleet and snow post dawn does describe the morning, for most of us, cold-ass day will get the message across.

 

Having my weird fascination with words, I'm also intrigued with how words and the way we string them together come into general social conversing and then go away, become archaic and odd sounding.  Of course, slang comes and goes.  Jeepers, groovy, far out, cool, hashtag (I've never got that one).  I think most slang and catch phrases fade away after a while because we wear them out, use them ad nauseam.  But, I'm not talking about slang, I'm talking about the way that our basic everyday English language has evolved and changed. 

 

The hubby says that he is amazed with the Civil War letters.  Letters home to friends and family and lovers. He says "they were so eloquent."  And that is true, they wrote in lovely detail of their feelings, their love, so many complimented and described in rich detail that was a beautiful as well as a heart breaking picture of life in those days. Even from a gory battlefield, formal handwritten messages were penned that they prayed would be delivered.  Flowery and rarely pornographic.

 

However, when Amy on Big Bang Theory, with skill and hilarity delivered the quote from Chaucer's The Miller's Tale, it sent me straight to the big ole' web to find out the true "translation".  Sure enough, as she said, it's "dirty".  Just plain ancient English porn.  And Absalon hath kist hir nether ye.

 

Nether means lower, below and though it's not a word you hear very often these days, occasionally someone makes a joke about their "nether regions".  They aren't referring to their feet. So, while I'm still not sure what ye-a, as Amy said with a laugh and raised eyebrow, is exactly---I get that if Absalon kissed it, it was nasty.

 

Words are interesting. Words and the way we use them are complicated and ever changing. Where would we be without our language?  Although, something tells me that just as still can be observed in our times, a cave man that gyrated and pointed to his nether regions got the same message across.