Jive Talk, Candidly

11/27/2018

Mark Twain once wrote, “Human bein’s is about as odd a bunch of folk what ever walked on the earth!” and I reckon he’s right in his assessment of us. My dad said many times, “People are funnier than anybody!” and I reckon he’s right, too! What makes us that way? Is there a correlation between the word “human” and the word “humor” both starting with the letters h-u-m, hmm? Maybe so, maybe so. 

Technically, and archaically speaking, humor is the moist (or wetting) part of the eye, or even in the bloodstream, the moisture was once referred to as the “humor” of the blood….I guess we’re past using the word that way, wouldn’t you say? Imagine explaining the tears running down the cheeks of some animal by describing it as “humor was pouring out the eyes!” Just will not jive in today’s literary works!  

And speaking of “jive” —there’s a good word for you: jive wasn’t even a word when Noah Webster finished writing his 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language. Even when “jive” was coined as a word in the 1920s, it meant deceptive or worthless talk, like —“you’re jivin’ me!” Then, in the late 1940s, it became a form of dancing, coupled with the use (similar to the 20s talk) as being a sneer or a taunt! Wait, I just used another oddly known word: “coined.”

We all know what “coins” are—penny, nickel, dime, quarter, or in other parts of the world shekel, shilling, copper, silver, etc. But, what of my usage in the previous paragraph? Coined? Here’s a way to test that usage: think of a phrase, like, “better red than dead,” then ask Google, “Who coined the phrase better red than dead?” In less than 1/2 second, 3500 responses will come up! Someone else knows how to use the word coined, hey?

But coinage, the act of inventing a new word or phrase, or coined as I used it was around in Webster’s day, in almost the same way it is used today. Why do some words last, some words go away, and some words are newly coming into the language? Beats me. 

I can tell you this, if a grammar school teacher or even all the way through high school teachers had brought this up to me then, I would have dived right into dictionary comparisons. The way it was, they just irritated me when I would ask “how do you spell ____? And they would respond by saying, “look it up?” That just served to irritate me. (If I knew how to look it up, I would know how to spell it, I’d reason.)

Back when Noah decided to write a dictionary of the way Americans were using the English language, here’s how he described what he wanted to do:   “In the year 1783, just at the close of the revolution, I published an elementary book for facilitating the acquisition of our vernacular tongue, and for correcting a vicious pronunciation, which prevailed extensively among the common people of this country.”* Could people today who were “elementary” even understand his opening statement? Probably have to think about it awhile.

I mentioned a few lines back a word I’d put into a previous “paragraph,” another choice word—paragraph, Webster: “to write near or beyond the text; beyond, and to write.” … Is that the way you would describe a paragraph? Mr. Webster did go on to say what most of us would give: a distinct part of a discourse or a writing. Originally, in Latin from Greek, a paragraph is “a short stroke marking a break in sense.” 

We do strange things with words over years of usage. The two most controversial words would probably be “conservative” and “liberal” which have alternately been used opposite to what they had been previously. And in our day, “gay” isn’t quite the meaning as when a movie was made called, “The Gay Divorcee,” or the era known as the “Gay Nineties.” Some might say this is an improvement for benefit of whom it applies, rather than the 50s & 60s abhorrent use of the word “queer,” which was an odd use for a word which meant strange, originally.

So, today we have a language which, if given a few more years, will not be in total existence, but will be a different language and we, if we are still alive, will be the ones using it still.

Some words we don’t use anymore: kerfuffle—yes, that is an English word (Scot or Irish)

How about this: Obsequious, what, you don’t use that anymore?

: Meretricious, of course, you would not be so crass!

: Pusillanimous, don’t think of me that way!

I trow this could get long. To wit, as an old nemesis might say to me, you can run on!

Thanks for reading, the Elder

• Opening of Noah Webster’s preface to his 1828 dictionary. A most amazing clarity. —“Clarity, see American Dictionary, Clarity, 2B.”