The Meaning of Words

Blog Post Number 55 Written: 07-30-2021 Uploaded: 04-21-2023

            So, my mind is going deep down the literary well, consider this a double bonus post. As post number 53 was supposed to be my final topic, and now here I am writing two more in one day, making this number 55.

            For this one, I would like you, to briefly consider with me the power of words, the flexibility of the English language, and human words in general. How one short sentence can, with the use of social ques and the broader spectrum of interpretation, mean so much more than what the induvial words portray, and on top of that, that meaning can be very different to very different people.

            I remember hearing a soap commercial, that rudely interrupted my music video on YouTube, and as a writer, the commercial gave me pause because of its words. Boasting that their soap would make it so you no longer “Smelt like you did nothing but play table tennis in your stepfathers’ basement.”

            That could mean a lot of things to a lot of people, to me, that does conjure up dank smells, neckbeards, crushed beer cans, overflowing ashtrays, the stench of boots just peeled off, that reek so strongly it gives the room a different color, of socks so unwashed and so long abandoned they have begun growing mushrooms, waifu pillows discolored from all the unwashed cuddling. I have also never had a stepfather, or been in a house with a basement, the ground is too hard out here in Arizona to dig basements.

            I know a woman who had an abusive father, and the same sentence of table tennis in a stepfather’s basement will speak to her in terms of tears, blood, punches, locked doors, darkness, and the damp smell that wet algae growing concrete gives off. For different reasons both thoughts make you feel unclean and want to scrub off the first couple layers of skin with whatever soap you can most easily get at hand, or sand, or belt sander until your body is again clean. In neither my case, nor hers do I think it particularly draws us to purchase that soap, though it has been years since I have spoken to the person in question and that statement is entirely supposition and I do not pretend to speak on their behalf.

But let us for a minute contemplate other words and all the colors and feelings and meanings that they portray beyond the single word itself, and what those feelings might be to other people, for discussion’s sake I will lift a few arbitrary

War

Demon

Game

Feeding

Thanks

Guilt

Worship

Love

Try those words on for size, and leave a comment with what your gut feels about that. Let’s have a conversation.