Knowing Words

Words are shy and do not divulge their secrets easily, especially to a learner of a new language. Chancing upon a new word, you try to sweet-talk, prod, poke, wring and wrestle the meaning out of it but, save for a few subtle clues, it refuses to yield.

You then summon the dictionary, and it assists in the introductions and exchanges of pleasantries. In time, the word sheds its reticence, and it wants to see you more often: It starts popping up with greater frequency than before, sometimes in the most unexpected of places. It waves; you recognise it, smile, and wave back. Soon you become more friendly with it, and it comes to your aid whenever the need for it arises.

That’s the thing about words. They were merely scratches and scribbles in the beginning, but as you get to know them better, they morph into the very thing they mean. Happy, angry, ghost, death: Don’t they look like what they mean? Especially death. Look at it. Tell me it didn’t make you shudder. How about ghost? Can you feel it reaching out at you with its cold hands?

And there is more to that. As you get even more intimate with a word, it starts to mean more to you than what the dictionary says it means (although still remaining true to it… sometimes). Many words share the same definition, but you know somewhere in your mind that they cannot truly replace one another. One has a greater intensity to you than the other; another delivers what you want to say with greater subtlety.

Yet, believe it or not, those words — Happy, angry, ghost, death — had no such effect on you when you were a toddler or when you were learning them as new words, before you made their acquaintances. And if you don’t know Chinese, the character 鬼* is just another scribble or drawing. But once you become its friend, you might wish you hadn’t.

I suppose some of you might be thinking: Of course they had no meaning to us on first meeting, because words and their meanings are arbitrary. They are not inherently related, but are instead linked to each other by human beings.

That is true. But I see it the same way with many other things.

Take people, for example. Everyone else whom you hadn’t met has no true meaning to you, other than being just another person. As you get to know them, these people start to mean something to you. Your neighbour might mean trust; your colleague might mean annoying. Even that stranger whom you pass every day with only a glance carries a meaning: guy who passes by every day. Your parents become safety and love after your first few months in the world.

Like words, however, these “meanings” we give to people are idiosyncratic to us—entirely arbitrary. That neighbour might be a liar and a cheat to his old friends; your colleague might instead be labelled “best father” by his children and not the least bit annoying.That stranger could be someone’s life-saver, and your parents don’t mean as much to your friends as they do to you.

So, it would seem I might be ascribing personalities to something like words. Why yes, I am. But these are the personalities I gave them. What about you? Take a word—an adjective, perhaps—and see what it means. Even if you know its dictionary definition, what does it mean to you?

* It’s the Chinese character primarily used to mean “ghost”.