See You in the Cave
John W. Sammon
October 04, 2006
I’m really English at heart.
Nevertheless, there are words in this language that through no choice of my own, I have to do without.
English contains a lot of surplus, rarely used words, as though its ancient Greek, mostly Latin and British forbearers wanted us to have plenty of backup….like a spare tire on a car.
For example, the word serendipity. This means the faculty of making “fortunate discoveries by accident.” It originated from the title of an ancient Persian play, The Three Princes of Serendip. When was the last time you told someone, “you certainly were serendipitous today?” Instead, you probably just say, “you’re a lucky bastard!”
Another is languid. This means, weak, lacking energy or vitality. Instead, of saying, “boy you’re languid!” you would probably say, “what a wuss (weakling) you are!” Wuss is slang and not even a real word.
Are you an iconoclast? That means you attack traditional ideas or institutions. But nobody today would call you that. They would call you a rebel. James Dean was called a screen rebel, not a screen iconoclast.
Or, they would just call you a “trouble makin’ sonofabitch!”
How about that classic, perspicuous, which means “clearly expressed, easy to understand.” If that’s what it means, how come nobody except me knows what it means? It’s not easy to understand at all. You wouldn’t call someone or something “perspicuous.” You would simply say, “I hear ya‘,” or “I dig” (in the 60’s), or just the drab, “I see.”
See the correlation here? English is really two languages locked in a struggle. The English of the moronic masses and their ever-encroaching slang words (usually expressed with some hostility like F' off!). And the King’s English, the English of the nobility, those beautiful, lyrical, long-winded words that nobody uses anymore.
The King’s English is clearly losing the battle.
Instead, those undereducated common-as-dirt commoners (the masses), those who elect the wrong people to political office with disastrous results, are trying by instinct to simplify words to a few grunts. They’re trying to reverse evolution and drag us back into the cave. Eventually, the way things are going, communication will be once again conducted by a series of grunts and a few words. Oomgowa! Me want you! Me man! You, great looking chick with big tits. Far out!
The ignorant masses,
when they shorten and slang words together, usually change the meaning to more of an insulting slant (call me shit-head instead of malodorous), or they give it a sexual cast (F' you! instead of you scurrilous knave).
Sex, fighting and beer have always been the principal activities of the ignorant mob. They may sit and watch a Shakespeare play in the Middle Ages with beautiful poetic words, but at intermission they'll be brawling and wenching (then as now, they rarely called it fornication).
For years, an old trick was for an uneducated person to use big words in an attempt to sound educated. Racist white trashy people in the 1950s used to have a saying. They said, “he talks like a college (Afro American - racist N term deleted).”
Cretins (dumb shits) are usually hostile.
What about persnickety? Okay. How many of you have called someone persnickety? Raise your hands. This means, “very particular about details.” People used to use the words “fuss budget,” then they went to “nitpicker.” Today, they might use “perfectionist,” or go the negative route and call you a “neat-freak.”
I’m forced to go along with this return to the cave, or as we say today, “street language.” If I don’t, if I use words like the above, people will brand me as an out of touch elitist (or in other words, I think I'm hot shit). They'll come up with some negative, sexually-violent-connotative slang word for me that is maybe yet to be coined.
I have to talk like this, “hey bro. Dude! Cool! What be happenin’….rad…get down!
See you in the cave.
Copyright 2006 by SammonSays.com
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