In Other Words...

So what happens when you are trying to get a point across to someone, but you find yourself in a pickle due to an inability to find the right words to say? A typical teacher response is: "Dictionary". But sometimes it is more than slightly awkward to halt your conversation and go rifling through one.

Or pretend you are perspicacious enough to have found the perfect word to describe your emotional circumstance, but the person you are talking to doesn't understand the word you have selected? Hand them the dictionary? Or stay up until dawn trying to explain it to them?

Here's a helpful hint: make it up. Does that sound heathenous to you? That worthless boy deserves to be slapped for such an obscene idea. But seriously guys! Language exists for communication, and sometimes you can communicate easier with a word that doesn't exist. So take the liberty, and make up words.

And for the record, I didn't coin this idea. Perhaps you think that making up words is something that only illiterate and unintelligent people do, but I'll bet my left elbow you're wrong. Some of the most highly esteemed and majestic writers in history made a hobby of it. Take Shakespeare for instance. Throughout his plays he coined more than 1500 words that are common today. If he needed a word to describe something obscure, he made it up!

George Bernard Shaw, another playwright, messed with English a different way. Throughout his many works, he spelled words differently in an attempt to change how the English language was written. If he didn't like the way a word looked, he changed its spelling. THIS idea, however, did NOT catch on. Don't try it. Misspelling words really is a terminatable crime.

Why do you suppose the dictionary keeps getting bigger? Words are added. About 10,000 words are added to the English language every decade. Where do they come from? People MAKE THEM UP. And why do they catch on? Because these made-up words often communicate better than the words that already exist. For instance, you know what a tide pool is, right? "A pool of salt water left (as in a rock basin) by an ebbing tide." Tide pool is a good way to describe that. Everyone knows what you mean. Do you know how long 'tide pool' has been a part of the English language? Less than two days. Just added.

The point that I am trying to make here is, even if you are not undefeatable in Scrabble, you can still communicate just as well as the rest of the scholarly world by using your own words. If we understand what you mean, it's ok.

Words in red were all introduced to the world by Shakespeare. Others include: eyeball, unreal, bump, and skim milk.
Words in blue are my own. They aren't in the dictionary, but they made sense, right?