Nice!

A friend commented once, “It’s 24 degrees out this morning.  It feels almost balmy.  Last night coming home, it was 12 and as I was fumbling with the levers on the steering wheel looking for the high beams, I accidentally hit the window wash.  It froze instantly!  Nice!”

I love my friend’s description of what happened, and even understand the “nice” at the end.  Of course she wasn’t in the least excited about what had just happened. In fact, she was completely annoyed, and rightly so, given the circumstances.  Have you ever thought about the English language?  In a word, it’s complex!  In two words, very complex!  I heard once that English might be the most difficult language to learn, because of how differently we use words.

Words seem to travel.  They travel from country to country, are added and subtracted to, combined with other words, and even created.  Other times they kind of mutate into words from their original meaning into something completely different.  Tim McGraw, in his country music hit years ago, “Remember When?” kind of brought that to the forefront.

            Tim McGraw focused on words like coke, crack and hoe, among others.  If you used the word “coke” in a sentence fifty years ago it would have meant a sugary, sweet drink and only a drink.   In today’s vocabulary it can still mean the syrupy, sweet drink many people still enjoy, but it also is a name for a horrible, debilitating, illegal drug.

            According to the dictionary, the word nice means to be agreeable, pleasant; and some would even say kind.  In the thirteenth century the word nice actually meant a foolish or simple person!  In the early 1600’s it meant behavior that encouraged wantonness; and by the late 1600’s it had changed yet again to mean a wicked person! It continued to change and in different time periods meant extravagant, elegant, strange, modest, thin and for a time, even shy!

            Other words that have morphed over time includes: awful once meant deserving awe.  To be ‘brave’ was to be cowardly (like “bravado”); ‘girl’ meant a young person of either sex; ‘guess’ meant to take aim; ‘nuisance’ was to bring injury or harm; and ‘quick’ meant to be alive!

So words change.  I guess you could say, “So what?”  And maybe it is a small thing, but for a moment think of words like frosty, or revenge or brunch.  Perhaps in fifty years or so, words common to us now, may mean something completely different. 

There isn’t really anything wrong with this. Everything changes.  I have to admit, however, to see how much words can change just really drives home how nothing ever stays the same.  We are born, are school children, teenagers and then adults.  Our children look at us as though we’ve lost our minds when we reminisce on the past.  A song brings back a memory, a picture brings remembrances of a different hair style, or clothes fashion, or a word— that meant something totally different in an era, now long gone.  It seems every generation is unique; and that’s as it should be….so long as we don’t forget our past or disrespect it.