Words

On my walk this morning, one of my neighbors was taking her children to school. The five-year-old was riding a short two wheeler bike without training wheels. It was going well, if a bit wobbly. Then the mother called out, “Push hard with your legs.”  A new determination appeared in those legs, the bike straightened out and soon the walkers were running after the zooming cyclist.

“Push hard with your legs.” It is a simple phrase and yet contains such power. When I was learning to ride a bike at the much later age of 10, I heard “pedal faster” which did not compute immediately. I was already tentative and a bit frightened and the thought of making it go faster did not appeal. There was not a discussion of the connection between pedaling faster and removing the wobble from the experience. I was just trying to not fall – again. I did not know my legs had power. A subtle difference with meanings worlds apart.

Language is a funny thing. There are so many words and so many more meanings. I love mixing them up and creating plays on words. Vocabulary is high in my values and learning new words is great fun, but how can a “fancy” vocabulary keep you from effectively communicating?

Words are powerful. They can cut you to the quick. They can fill your heart. They can confuse and obfuscate meanings. We give them a lot of weight, and yet do we stop to think before using them?

Inimical is my word of the moment.  It appears often in a book I am reading, but I felt the need to look it up recently.  It means tending to obstruct or harm. It can also mean unfriendly or hostile.  It is a good word and according to my research it was quite popular in the 1800s, falling off rapidly by the 1950s and I would have to say rarely used in most communication today. It might aptly describe how many are feeing about the world these days. So timely and yet unused because few would know what it means.

I think I will try out new ways of communicating. Using interesting words that have fallen out of favor combined with sensible instructions.

“If you are dealing with an inimical person, push hard with your legs. That might straighten things out.”

I’ll keep working on it.