The Precision of Words

It is my opinion that the precision of words should never be threatened. In the art of expression, many people create terms and use words while indifferent to the meaning. Our society allows flexibility with language; people may speak or write colloquially or formally. This ability is what allows contradiction. For instance, the word “clipping” may mean to attach together or it may mean the very opposite, to detach. Similarly, there is no error in the usages of “execute” in the following sentence.

The man executes his prisoner and the baby executes his life.

The first execute could mean the prisoner was killed and the second execute could mean the baby was born. These types of differing usages of words must stop accumulating. They are the source of much confusion in our society.

If a word is defined with one meaning and may suggest another, especially if both meanings are diametric, it is likely it will gain another usage or become an autantonym. This is usually because new and passionate ideas of a word’s meaning may become popular and be added to the definition. When this happens, society stifles its literary expansion by one word. This is a bad habit. A better habit would be to create new words for these new ideas. Then the human capacity for language would expand. This rarely happens. Far too many people make old words into neologisms for corporate gain or in a misguided attempt at enhancing language. In the spirit of neologisms, I will provide my fictional evidence and empirical evidence for this theory in the same sentence:

The popular book “1984” by George Orwell describes a fantastic dystopia where the illuminations of language dimmed.

Pay attention to usage. The word fantastic is used to describe the dystopia as “not real”. It could mean extravagant, based in fantasy or even superb – the latter making “fantastic-dystopia” an oxymoron. Few readers could decide the meaning of fantastic in that sentence, it’s far too vague.

Pay attention to words. The neologism “dystopia” was not a word until it was used by John Staut Mill in a speech to the British parliament in 1868. The prefix Dys is derived from the Greek Dus and means “bad”, the suffix topia is also derived from Greek and means “place”. Thus dystopia means a “bad-place”. It’s used to contradict with utopia – which suggests a good place; but the “u” in utopia is derived from Ou in Greek which means “not” thus utopia literally mean “not a place”. In this sense, it also makes utopia and dystopia not contradictory and unrelated. Thanks to Sir Thomas More and his passionate ideas in 1516, we have another word that is indifferent to its original definition.

Now consider a definition of illumination: a source of light that is intrinsically bright. Also consider a definition of dimmed: to have lacked in brightness. Using these definitions, the phrase “the illuminations in language dimmed” might mean the bright light of language lacked in brightness. This is a logical fallacy. Luckily for me and unluckily for society, the definitions of these words have changed and multiplied over time. Illuminations may also mean: things that are understandable. Dimmed may also mean: to become more obscure. Suddenly the phrase “illuminations of language dimmed” is logical. All this confusion is possible as people’s passionate ideas of words were allowed to be added to the definitions because of the flexibility of language in our society.

Language is very confusing. When interpretations of words become popular, the definitions may change. The more the definitions change, the more ambiguity we have in our language. Ambiguity is what allowed autantonyms to become a large part of language. We are always forced to interpret in our society when language is gradually loosing its meaning – the same words are beginning to mean more and more things. It is a digression that cripples our ability to communicate and also our ability to be analytical with language. How can anyone be held accountable for what they say or write if words have dozens of possible meanings? New words should be a natural process of language expansion, but convolutions of older ones should not be. George Orwell’s ideas about double-speak seem more and more likely with each new dictionary edition.