A Word is a Book
Pick up a book you wish to read. Read its first word, perhaps even of its title. What is the word? Before you go any further into your reading, first read the word. I do not mean pronounce it, but read it as you would read the book. A word is like a book. It has pages, or even volumes, of meaning. One has to read, glean the full meaning contained within its lexical form. Hence, reading a word takes much more time and effort than pronouncing it.
I recently reoriented my reading from books to words. I have had to choose among words from their shelves on the great library that is language as we do among books. Some words are more worthwhile to read than others just as some books are than others. First, I picked up the one word that always intrigued me: ‘sincere’. Here is a word we must have used or that must have crossed our mind or reading 17,632 times in the last month. Alright, I made the number up. In any case, the point is it is common, yet have we read it? What does this two syllable, mystery of a word mean?
I check the word in the dictionary. It lists these two meanings:
1. (of feelings, beliefs, or behavior) showing what you really think or feel
2. (of a person) saying only what you really think or feel
Funny: defining word with words that I have yet to read and appreciate (What is show? How do you show? What does think or feel mean?). How else can a word be defined if not by using other words, you say? I wish there were a dictionary that defined word without using words. A semantic dictionary of a sort. Words or lexemes are deceptive. But meaning – meaning is the thing out there, the spirit.
There is more to a word than its dictionary meaning and more still than its etymology. While it is useful to begin your reading of a word with them, it is important that we get out of the lexical and etymological aspects just as soon. We need to look upon word not as a lexicon but as a droplet of meaning (I am aware that in this description itself, I have used words I have yet to read, ‘droplet’ and ‘meaning’. I use them in their shallow, dictionary sense until I read them). Reading a word becomes about thinking beyond language, on meaning without putting meaning inside the cloak of lexicon. One has to fight off the urge to label meaning in lexicon such as reading ‘sincere’ as ‘honest’.
In essence, reading a word is forcing oneself to think outside the confines of language, its form, onto the spirit of language instead. We begin to contemplate upon what exactly is encoded inside the word? What is the idea-whatever that means-its properties? How is meaning sliced from universal meaning in the language into the word? You see, the scope and boundaries of a word in one language vary from its corresponding word in another language. François (2008) states “the meaning of a given word in one language will never match exactly the meaning of its most usual translation in another language: its “semantic outline”, as it were, is unique to that particular system, and cannot be found identical anywhere else”.
I believe we need to grasp the spirit of the words in our language – or at least the more important ones. I will venture so far as to suggest that every one of us, all the 7,828,433,755 of us (not making this number up, our number as I write this as is given in ‘World Counts’), should major in the word of our choice and perhaps add a minor in another word. Hence, one would say, “I am majoring in ‘fortune’ and minor in ‘walk’”. The spirit of our existence, all our dreams, aspirations, fears, wellbeing, outlook, is contained in the words and that is the only subject worth studying.
