- Subtle: Very delicately precise or difficult to analyze
The Tower of Babel is still under construction. Words, which should be the building blocks of communication, have too often become stumbling blocks that muddle and confuse. Two people speaking the same English language can walk away from a debate with both assuming they’ve won the argument.
The Oxford English Dictionary lexicographers estimate there are about 170,000 English words in use today, but anyone with a vocabulary of about 6,000 will be able to get along. That is, if they don’t fall into the hands of a 30,000-word salesman or politician.
Take a word like “progress” for instance. Some man frustrated with living in a crowded city will think he’s made “progress” for his wife and kids by moving to a small town and providing them with elbow room and cleaner air.
However, the small town’s mayor and council feel they’re making “progress” if they can convince enough industry to move in and make it a teeming metropolis.
How about “discomfort” ? You’d think that would describe a very lowgrade pain a bit more irritating than two mosquito bites. When the medics say their patients will experience “some discomfort” after a procedure, the patient will buy a bottle of aspirins beforehand which will be out of reach that night as he dangles moaning from his bedroom chandelier.
We seem to have an aversion to using exact numbers . “Be home at a reasonable hour,” we tell our teenager when we’re thinking “elevenish” but he’s thinking “dawnish”. The repairman promises to have your roof leak-proof “in a few days”. He still can’t be reached two rainy weeks later when you’re running out of pots and pans.
Another problem is what I call the “U-turn word” that’s the “cancel button,” wiping out whatever was spoken immediately before it. Just suppose Patrick Henry’s patriotic declaration was actually longer than we read in history books and his speech included a U-turn phrase that some editor deleted. He might have said, “Give me liberty or give me death, unless of course we can reach some less lethal middle ground.”
U-turn phrases can be a quite painful. Remember showing your neighbor the doghouse or cabinet you’d built and how he went on and on praising your “skill and imagination” while you stood beaming, waiting to thank him, but then he arrived at his U-turn. “But you know, you’ve violated many important important rules of carpentry and style.”
If I asked you tomorrow if you enjoyed reading this blog, you might reply, “Oh yes, it was quite informative and amusing, however………”
I’d reply, “I’d sincerely tried to add a few moments of levity to your day. If you think otherwise, that’s perfectly okay with me, but…….”
Imagine That 