Come, let us pray
Words are powerful. They are a currency of power, like money or law or hierarchy or psychology. They can be used benignly or with mischief, to heal or to control. And the meanings of words can be arbitrary, shared and disputed. I almost would like to see a new language emerge that keeps meanings fixed, in a capsule, pure and unchangeable. But that wouldn’t do either, for the problem does not lie within language. I don’t think words are meant to be taken literally. At the most simple level, words only point to other sets of words for definition. And higher up in complexity is metaphor and analogy and humour and subtext and sarcasm and passive aggression, etcetera. There can be a chasm between what I say and how it is received. I guess that's a constant. Words’ meanings change over time, which is bizarre and fascinating. Like, until the late fifteenth century the word girl meant a child of either sex. Boys were occasionally called knave girl and girls were known as gay girls. And up