A Few Good Words

Got any good words that you don’t want other people to know about?

Come on, you can tell me.
I’ve got some of my own, that maybe I could show you, if you’re nice: and if I trust you.
I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.
Just a peek?
Oh no, I understand. I feel the same way. There’s so few good words left that haven’t already been, what would the word be – appropriated?
Conservative? No way.
Liberal? Yikes!
Insurgency?
Just a few years back, ‘insurgency’ was a pretty good word: nice shine, fairly rare usage, with a certain pungent tone that reminded me of the way Hoisin sauce sets off roast duck. Used to be that when you heard ‘insurgency’ your ears stood up, and your pupils dilated.
But then they took it, strapped it down, and beat it until it gave up its secrets – or what passed for secrets. And now, who the hell knows what insurgency is supposed to mean?
Language used to be the last frontier: a remote, vast plateau of natural wonders that seemed impossible to encompass in a single life. And maybe it still us, but like the thieves who cut down rare cacti to sell to garden centers or landscapers, some of our best words are being chopped down and burned on the bonfires of politics.
It’s not funny. It’s very serious. Remember the rainforest: we may be the first generation to see vast forests of language cut down, stacked up, and turned into what the British call ‘bumf’ (I got that word out of my secret stash)
How can this be happening?
Perhaps it’s for the same reason that there are people who still believe, wholeheartedly, that we never went to the moon – that government officials staged the landing on a soundstage in Hollywood.
Most of us haven’t experienced those distant worlds, or visited the outer realms of our own language, so we are vulnerable to the re-definers.
The re-definers?
I made that word up. Yeah, I could do better, but it does have a certain crass, direct quality I think, and that fits my purpose.
Re-definers are not interested in subtlety. They are not interested in using words for greater understanding but, rather, for a specific understanding.
They take words to the slaughterhouse, then grind them into hamburger, then add all sorts of fillers and seasoning until it suits their purpose.
So there is perhaps a certain irony that the latest word to be rounded up, is ‘hunger’.
God, I may be dating myself, but I can remember a time when ‘hunger’, the word, was almost as powerful as actual hunger: when mother’s scolded their children with stories of millions starving in India.
Of course that’s’ the point of language, isn’t it? Words are supposed to have power.
In time all words are stripped of their power, through overuse, or other cultural factors – and when that happens they are blown from our consciousness as easily as dust off the furniture.
But most words live for a great long time, for hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years, evolving with the times.
Hunger, of course, is an ancient word that has stood its ground (from the Old English ‘hungor’) – and a word that has survived for obvious reasons. How can the word disappear, when its meaning persists in our reality?
How is that possible?
And yet, according to a government report, hunger doesn’t exist.
According to the lexicologists in the Bush Administration 35 million Americans no longer are hungry but, instead, have “very low food security”.
According to former Banking Industry lobbyist Katie Coler – appointed by Bush to be an Undersecretary of the US Department of Agriculture, the intent was to end the confusion as to whether the numbers cited in their annual report on ‘Food Security” estimated the number of people who were actually hungry, or those experiencing difficulty ‘accessing’ food.
“I think it passes the common sense test,” Coler told ABC News, “in that it does identify there is a need, and we do recognize that there are individuals in this country who face need from time to time.”
So by “need”, we are left to wonder, does Coler mean hunger, or food insecurity?
And by “recognition”, does Coler mean the kind of recognition that we experience when we see a homeless person on the street, and step over them, or the kind of recognition that a ‘Food Insecurity Specialist’ has, when they are confronted with a large number of the shelter-challenged, and step over them?
And by ‘thumpin’ does President Bush mean to say his administration was rejected, or beaten, or repudiated? Or is he really a bit more sly than that, and in fact deliberately using a soft, colloquial expression, so he can shuffle his feet, and smirk and pretend that nothing serious has happened to him, and that nothing serious is going to happen to the 35 million hungry, or the 45 million uninsured, or the 150 million who owe more to the credit card companies than their parents every earned in an entire year?
Which brings us back to insurgency.
No, not the alleged insurgency of those poor saps in Iraq, but of the poor saps at home.
Insurgency, as in ‘active revolt’.
Insurgency, as in the sea, ‘rushing in’.
Insurgency, as in the need to reclaim our words – and our world, from the politicians and the marketers; the need to recognize what is going on, rise up, roll in, and wash away these ‘re-definers’.
Or maybe what we need is a civil war.
I guess it depends on how you define it.