Paying for School

My ongoing adventures in life and the pursuit of more...

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Words With Friends

Like you, I read.  And like you, I also write.  And like you, I read blog posts.  Maybe too much.

Something that has occurred to me lately is that we Anglophones talk the same talk but it seems to me, we often mean very different things though we use exactly the same words.  Voltaire is to have said, “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.”  There’s nothing like a vigorous debate that ends when one or both of the people engaged realizes they aren’t talking about the same thing, nor have they been.

For the sake of future research and as a reminder to me to define my terms and ask others to clarify their own meaning and usage in future conversations that may take on a feisty tone, I offer these words by which I think people in my circles often mean very different things from one another in their use.

Love
Sin
Recreation
Peace
Pharisee
Conversation
Forgiven
Poor
Rich
Leadership
Salvation
Vulnerable
Disciple
Vision
Community
Irony
Faith
Cynical
Jesus

Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

What words would you add to this list? What words are you confident always mean the same thing to everyone who uses them?


"Perhaps nothing speaks more eloquently of the variability of spelling in the age than the fact that a dictionary published in 1604, A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Words, spelled “words” two ways on the title page.”  ― Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage

1 comment:

  1. Why is it that you and Ted Cruz quote "The Princess Bride"? hmmmmmmm.........

    ReplyDelete