So many words are used these days ( even in this world of diminishing adjectives.) The young and less well-educated of our global population would no doubt tell us that something they like is awesome, wicked, cool, sick, hot, or some such other word that bears little relationship to its original meaning.
I would hate to have to write a dictionary for today's younger generation. How something can be cool and hot at the same time is beyond me. A young man may see a young woman and say " she is hot. " or " she is so cool. She is smoking hot " These phrases mean that a young man has just seen a particularly attractive female to whom he is sexually attracted.
I know exactly what they mean. But it caused me to ponder how our vocabularies have shrunk over the past few decades and how even our very spelling has become a shadow of its once glorious self.
We have become a generation of abbreviations, alphabet names and slang.
Where words have lost their meaning and a missing comma can change the entire intent of a written message.
Years ago, I heard the late great Victor Borge talking about his phonetic punctuation.
We ignore the power of the full stop and the power of the capital letter or the power of having an active and wide vocabulary, How can we communicate with accuracy?
I was once in sales and listened to a man who said that when you write or speak, target your message to a 12 year old. That way you will never be condescending or over the top.
Words are powerful ammunition. There is a simplicity and beauty in the English language.
Once, I got a call to the boarding school my girls attended. I was out shopping with Redhead and I got a call that my daughter had assaulted a Nun.
My horror was off the scale. Redhead and I leaped in the car and immediately drove the 3 hours to her school to face the music, as the saying goes. I can assure you that the mood in that car was not cool. It was HOT. In fact, it was smokin'.
We arrived and learned that the person who made the call was mistaken. My daughter had not assaulted a Nun. She had insulted a Nun.
My initial reaction was enormous relief.
Redhead sat there and looked at me, and we exchanged a glance that said " Thank God! "
We both looked back at the head honcho Nun and with great solemnity, I asked "What did she say, Sister? I am so sorry. "
Sister explained that my daughter and her fellow boarders had all been locked down in the boarding house because a couple of the girls had left the boarding house without permission so the entire house was being punished.
My daughter had objected and declared that she did not agree that she should be punished for the actions of other people.
Sister explained that it was her decision and that was an end to it.
My daughter declared that " it wasn't fair and you are nothing but a Nazi! "
Oh dear.
I cringed. I shuddered. I wanted to slink under the table.
I told Sister that I would deal with it. I met my daughter and explained to her that it was not appropriate to call a Nun a Nazi, no matter how strongly she felt the injustice.
I tried to explain that it was important to use the right words to express outrage and that, whilst I agreed with her, it was not her view or opinion that was at fault, but her lack of respect for those charged with her education.
I asked her to apologise.
She met with Sister and said
" I apologise for my words. I should not have said that. But I do not apologise for my belief that this punishment is wrong. "
The lockdown was lifted that night.
Over 35 years later, I am thinking about this and wondering how we dealt with this situation whereby we were locked down, through no fault of our own, and someone punished us for not doing as we were told. It wasn't fair.
Now, we are being threatened with being punished for being white. For being citizens. For not being aboriginal or for anything that our governments and a small group of vocal activists have decided is no longer OK.
I am sick of being told to apologise for my skin colour or for being " straight " or being conservative. I have had a gutful of Gay Pride when I am not allowed to be Proud of who I am and what I am.
I am over the climate change alarmists ( they even changed that term from " global warming so that they could cover all bases ... in my day we called climate change " weather " ) and their fear mongering and interference in the RESPONSIBLE management of our resources. And I am heartily sick and tired of racially driven changes to our laws and threats to create separate tiers of citizens, based on the hocus pocus of a few self declared aboriginal " elites ".
Changing laws means changing words and that is when the Devil most definitely is in the detail.
Even the change from referring to people as Indigenous opened a can of worms. Hence the quick change to Aboriginal.
People around the world are being warned to expect to pay reparations for having the audacity to have settled in a country previously inhabited by another race. Some were sent as convicts to serve a sentence in a penal colony; others were taken from their homes as children and sent as "orphans " to places like Australia and Canada.
Others fled oppression, starvation and religious persecution. The Irish were one of the populations hard hit by injustice.
When the majority are punished for the actions of the few, there is nothing fair in that.
You see, words are important. The old saying that we should always read the fine print is particularly relevant today. Definitions are being changed. Even the dictionary definition of the word " Vaccine " was updated in 2021.
We can't find many politicians who can define a woman these days.
With the referendum on " The Voice " we are being asked to place our trust in words yet to be written and vague reassurances that all will be well.
Because words DO matter and yes, the devil is definitely in the detail.
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