Words mean things

Early one morning many years ago, I sat in a conference room with several colleagues, enjoying small talk while we waited for others who were to join us. Someone in the conversation used the word “sabotage.” I said that was an interesting word and gave them a brief summary of its history. They all burst into loud laughter, amazed that I knew that and thought it worth recounting. I was equally astonished that they were not interested in words. But then, I’m a word person.

Being a word person is not a profession. The condition may or may not have any connection with one’s work. It’s like being left-handed or blue-eyed. You just are. Word people know from childhood that we relate to each other with words and that we think with words. Ergo, words are of prime importance.

To be a word person does not mean you are elite, an academic, or have a high level of education. My mother, who went only through seventh grade, in a country school, was a word person. Well into her 90s, she still read, still pondered English usage, still looked up words in her dictionary. Her children exhibited the same interest. We, and she, argued over words, sentences, proper usage, things we had read. Because word people read, voraciously. Just as a jewelry nut is fascinated by precious stones, a word person is driven to absorb words, reading whatever is available. No book handy? The word person will read the ketchup bottle label, drawn inexorably to those symbols that open up meaning to us, simple or complex.

This whole topic came to mind because of a book, “Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries,” by Kory Stamper. It was a gift from my daughter, who is also a word person. Ms. Stamper, a lexicographer at Miriam-Webster, attacks a subject that, in the hands of a lesser author, might be dry, even to word people. She demystifies the subject with wit, energy, deep knowledge, and occasional profanity. And with the firm belief that the English language, a wild, growing, semi-legitimate amalgamation of other languages and careless input from everyday people, cannot be managed or confined by some intellectual control center.

Stamper explains that, contrary to what many of us believe, dictionaries aren’t prescriptive, they are descriptive. They don’t tell us how a word is supposed to be pronounced and spelled, or what it is supposed to mean. Instead, they tell us how our fellow citizens are regularly pronouncing, spelling, and defining it. Thus, she says, words that we word people don’t believe are for real, like “irregardless,” are quite acceptable in some parts of the country, useful and handy. Of course the word is illogical, with its meaningless “ir” added to the front of a word that already means “nevertheless.” But it’s no more illogical, she says, than “inflammable,” meaning the same as “flammable,” or “unravel,” meaning to ravel. She knows that word people tend to come unglued (“get very excited, even angry”) when we see words misused, misspelled, or otherwise mishandled on social media or on television, or elsewhere, but she insists that we should accept the fact that using “there” for “their” is not illegal.

There’s a good bit of logic in Kory Stamper’s defense of these words born of ignorance. But while I’m willing to accept, even use myself, a few long-established illogical words like unravel, I consider many of the ones she defends to be an affront to word people. I think they should be an affront to everyone. And I’ll admit to sometimes coming unglued when I see or hear them used. A local car dealer runs a television commercial that displays in print the assurance that the dealership will give you a great deal, even if “your” upside down in your car. When someone doesn’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re,” I’m not sure I could trust them to know the difference between an alternator and a radiator.

Whether you don’t care one way or the other or, like me, choke a bit at some of the tolerance with which Kory Stamper views incursions into the language by hostile words, I think you’d find her book worth reading. It’s a good read if you’re a word person or not. Irregardless.