Ethyl observes: Words

People in general are a queer lot.  I use that word in the same way a sixteenth century Quaker would have used it.  On meeting his friend for a morning stroll one old Quaker said to another, "Everyone be a bit queer excepting me and thee, and sometimes I have serious concerns about thee".  Funny how words have a way of evolving into completely new forms, just the same way a person over the course of a lifetime can evolve into a totally different personality.

The word queer is a prime example.  Three hundred years ago it referred to something that was not quite the everyday, slightly off what was considered to be ordinary and out of sync with everything else around it.  You seldom hear it used that way today.  It almost always refers to people whose sexual orientation differs from the norm.

Another word that comes to mind is apocalypse.  The word originally referred to a foretelling of future events, a revelation, so to speak.  The Biblical Apocalypse was to be source of great joy and happiness, deliverance for the faithful and wonderful future blessings. Thanks to Hollywood and the movie industry, today it has come to mean a global conflagration of the highest order.

The King James Version Bible and the works of Shakespeare are rife with expressions that have changed greatly over the course of a few hundred years.  Case in point is the account in Genesis where Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew.  The King James Version Bible says in Genesis chapter 25 and verse 29, 'and Jacob sod pottage', which means in today's English that Jacob was boiling up some stew. 

Another case in point is found in the Bible book of 1 Corinthians 10:25 where the Apostle Paul is advising the Christians that it is alright to eat meat sold in the meat markets although some of it may have been left over from the sacrifices that had been made to idols earlier that day.  The scripture in the King James Version reads, "Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake".  I have often wondered if our word today referring to a shabby ill kept resident could have derived from the condition sixteen century butchers kept their shops and meat stands.

Many words today mean just the opposite of what they meant four hundred years ago. Suffer in the sixteenth century meant to allow, let meant to prevent, and raise meant to tear down.

Even Mother Goose suffered as a result of time.  When Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet eating her curds and whey, today that event would be translated as Little Miss Muffet sat on a footstool eating her cottage cheese.  And pot porridge hot, pot porridge cold, pot porridge in the pot, ten days old, is referring to left over oatmeal that has been continually reheated for ten days.

I can't help but think how similar people are to words in this respect.  They can change so much you wouldn't even know them if you met them forty years after they graduated from high school.  I remember how we wrote in each others yearbooks 'you are my friend forever, I will never forget you.  Today I have trouble remembering  the names of at least half of the students I graduated with.  They ceased to be important to me when I ceased to have daily contact with them.. Just like words and their meanings are forgotten when we stop using them in daily life.

A word my maternal grandmother used to use was carn.  Once when she put out some poison to kill a mouse in her kitchen and it died in her wall the smell was horrible.  I remember her saying it smelled like carn.  I never really knew what she meant until I was helping my son with his Spanish lesson and we came across the words 'carne asada'.  It literally means roasted meat.  I suddenly realized grandma was saying the smell was so bad it smelled like rotting meat.  That was a word I sometimes heard my mother say, but one I have never heard used since.  Just like some people in my life who were no longer there on a regular basis, so this particular word was put back in the recesses of my mind, only to resurface very seldom, if ever.

Sometimes I think how much I have changed over the last forty five years.  Things I desired greatly, such as having every one's approval, no longer matter in the least to me.  I have found that most of the people who did not want me in their lives were for the most part people I would not want in mine.  They did me a great favor when they removed themselves, although when I was young and vulnerable, I certainly did not think so.  I also discovered that when it comes to friendship, quality is far more important than quantity. It is a great blessing indeed  to have a few people in your life who really care, who are loyal and trustworthy, and who would really mourn the loss of you if you were not in the world.  Those people could be compared to the benefit of a few well spoken words at the right time, as contrasted with so much prolific verbosity, spilling forth from certain mouths and cluttering up your world with needless chatter..  The majority of people you know in your life do not really care that much.  They will be friendly and pleasing to be with, but if you died tomorrow, they would come to your funeral, shed a few tears, feel sad maybe for a few days and then in a month's time go back to their lives and after a few years forget you ever existed, for the most part.

Certain people are just like certain words we have pushed to the back of our minds.  One time they were there, we knew them, even enjoyed  them sometimes, but now they are no longer important.  Sometimes the meaning of such people, like certain words, has totally reversed itself.  Instead of longing for their friendship, wishing for them to be a part of our vocabulary, so to speak, we are perfectly contented to carry on without them, even happy to a certain extent we no longer have to deal with them.  After all, there is almost no word that is irreplaceable.  We can almost always find a substitute in the English language for any thought we wish to express.

So don't grieve over people in your past.  There is a reason they didn't make it to your future.