So how can you and I improve our language? Over thirty years as an educator and now as a writer, I’ve done several things to keep my mind alert to broaden the mental concepts I associate with words. Hopefully, you may find some of them helpful.
1. Number one on my list is read, read, read, but not just the latest novels found in drugstores or even in the best bookstores. I’m referring to what I call great literature both present and past. In a small book titled Liberal Education, Mark Van Doren provides a must-read list of such books. Some may seem difficult at first, but by forcing yourself to read and understand their vocabulary, logic, and associated ideas, you can’t help but broaden your language base.
2. My second suggestion is to take or monitor a basic course
in either Latin or Greek. You can do this at a local college or university, or via the Internet. You will be amazed to see how many English words are derived directly from those two languages. So often, the derivative of an English word has a much richer meaning in either Latin or Greek.
3. Another suggestion is to read good poetry. This is not necessarily the mental stream-of-consciousness prose one finds rampant in bookstores today. What comes to my mind are the great poets of the past who used words in such unusual ways that within a short rhyming verse, they could express a beautiful yet complex idea, which would take me many paragraphs to explain.
Consider these four lines from Alexander Pope (1688–1744), the greatest English Satirist (Columbia Encyclopedia).
The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise;
But even the best by fits, what they despise.
Man, like the gen’rous vine, supported lives;
The strength he gains is from the embrace he gives.
The descriptive beauty of the following lyrics can be pictured
immediately. They are taken from Tennyson’s, The Lady of Shalott (1809-1892).
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold (a low plain) and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
4. Although it is difficult, it has been fun for me to try to replace the word “stuff” and “thing” in my own vocabulary. It is amazing how many times I use these two words in place of mental concepts I find difficult to explain. Yet, given enough thought, it enriches my thinking to name precisely what the “stuff” or “thing” is I’m talking about.
Article comments
1 - Joanne Huspek
Great article. I love words.
2 - Bliffle
Excellent article!
As it happens, I just ran across this by Walt Whitman, which you may enjoy:
“In a dream I once had, I saw a vessel on the sea, at midnight, in a storm. It was no great full-rigg‘d ship, nor majestic steamer, steering firmly through the gale, but seem‘d one of those superb little schooner yachts I had often seen lying anchor‘d, rocking so jauntily, in the waters around New York, or up Long Island sound " now flying uncontroll‘d with torn sails and broken spars through the wild sleet and winds and waves of the night. On the deck was a slender, slight, beautiful figure, a dim man, apparently enjoying all the terror, the murk, and the dislocation of which he was the centre and the victim. That figure of my lurid dream might stand for Edgar Poe, his spirit, his fortunes, and his poems " themselves all lurid dreams.” " (Walt Whitman, The Washington Star, November 16, 1875.)
3 - Ruvy
I found this article amusing. Having studied linguistics, and now having to study a Semitic language just to get by on a day-to-day basis, I find the recommendation to study Greek or Latin superfluous. A glance at an older dictionary (one with a section on foreign phrases), and a healthy understanding of Latin and Greek roots does wonders in revealing how the Greeks and Romans thought.
As to the word "thing", it means "council" - or that which is under consideration by a council. From that root meaning it has kind of expanded to meaninglessness. I very rarely use the word "stuff" (except as a verb).