“Incorrigible buffoon.” What a great line, eh?
Language is awesome. I love playing with it. You can motivate others. Teach them. Drive people in a specific direction. Get them to think along novel lines. It’s about word choice and how you string them together.
Certain words jump out. It may be history you have with them or something about the way they are pronounced that gets you humming.
I remember over 40 years ago when the younger brother of the woman I was dating at the time heard me say the word “spectacular.” You would have thought I invented electricity. He went off the rest of the evening calling everything he saw or heard “spectacular” solely because he loved the way the sound of the word rolled off his tongue. There’s a lot to be said for that.
Just last week I was in a cemetery, meeting with a family. I drove up in a golf cart. They were eating Taco Bell. I asked how “Taco Smells” tasted. There were two women eating and a son, a 9-year-old. OMG, I made a new best friend because of calling it “Taco Smells.” He decided to tell me a joke in response: Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road? Because he didn’t have guts.
Pretty good for a 9-year-old boy. But the funnier thing is I spoke with the mother the next day in following up with her on some cemetery services, and what did the boy remember about the encounter? Taco Smells. Not much else. He was having a blast with the word.
The nightly news has a field day with adjectives. Alarming attacks. Distressing diets. Horrific hurricanes. Terrible tidal waves. If you listen closely to the announcer and the words his or her writers have inserted into their mouths, you’ll hear a ton of adjectives designed to drive your thought process in a specific direction. It’s not reporting the news. It’s using words to direct you.
Words matter. For many reasons. They’re also fun and entertaining. They’re meant to be played around with to see if you can grab someone’s attention, make them think.
Bombastic.
Understated.
Marvelous.
Magnificent.
Blossom.
So many words to describe so many things about life and the people we encounter. Words make me think about the people we meet on a daily basis, and how we define them in our minds.
Loser.
Non-listener.
Excitable.
Relaxed.
And sometimes it takes more than one word. There’s the snake oil salesman, someone we all know. There’s the person who knows his stuff. The guy who thinks too much of himself. We don’t really have the one word to describe the individual so we have to string a few together to categorize that person.
This past week, I had a customer write to me about the job I did working with her family through a grieving period. Her words mattered. She chose them carefully, identifying specifically what I did to help them through a very difficult and sensitive situation.
Her shared words gave me a terrific feeling. I beamed with appreciation. She’s not a professional writer, but I wrote back and told her she had another career waiting in the writing profession if she wanted to pursue it. Don’t underestimate the written word.
Language is awesome. I love playing with it. You can motivate others. Teach them. Drive people in a specific direction. Get them to think along novel lines. It’s about word choice and how you string them together.
Certain words jump out. It may be history you have with them or something about the way they are pronounced that gets you humming.
I remember over 40 years ago when the younger brother of the woman I was dating at the time heard me say the word “spectacular.” You would have thought I invented electricity. He went off the rest of the evening calling everything he saw or heard “spectacular” solely because he loved the way the sound of the word rolled off his tongue. There’s a lot to be said for that.
Just last week I was in a cemetery, meeting with a family. I drove up in a golf cart. They were eating Taco Bell. I asked how “Taco Smells” tasted. There were two women eating and a son, a 9-year-old. OMG, I made a new best friend because of calling it “Taco Smells.” He decided to tell me a joke in response: Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road? Because he didn’t have guts.
Pretty good for a 9-year-old boy. But the funnier thing is I spoke with the mother the next day in following up with her on some cemetery services, and what did the boy remember about the encounter? Taco Smells. Not much else. He was having a blast with the word.
The nightly news has a field day with adjectives. Alarming attacks. Distressing diets. Horrific hurricanes. Terrible tidal waves. If you listen closely to the announcer and the words his or her writers have inserted into their mouths, you’ll hear a ton of adjectives designed to drive your thought process in a specific direction. It’s not reporting the news. It’s using words to direct you.
Words matter. For many reasons. They’re also fun and entertaining. They’re meant to be played around with to see if you can grab someone’s attention, make them think.
Bombastic.
Understated.
Marvelous.
Magnificent.
Blossom.
So many words to describe so many things about life and the people we encounter. Words make me think about the people we meet on a daily basis, and how we define them in our minds.
Loser.
Non-listener.
Excitable.
Relaxed.
And sometimes it takes more than one word. There’s the snake oil salesman, someone we all know. There’s the person who knows his stuff. The guy who thinks too much of himself. We don’t really have the one word to describe the individual so we have to string a few together to categorize that person.
This past week, I had a customer write to me about the job I did working with her family through a grieving period. Her words mattered. She chose them carefully, identifying specifically what I did to help them through a very difficult and sensitive situation.
Her shared words gave me a terrific feeling. I beamed with appreciation. She’s not a professional writer, but I wrote back and told her she had another career waiting in the writing profession if she wanted to pursue it. Don’t underestimate the written word.