"Words, words, words" - Eliza Colbert

Have you ever been talking to your friend and you couldn’t quite find the right words but your friend still knew exactly what you were trying to say? You know what I’m referring to, those moments when you’re trying to describe something and you say, “it’s kind of like this but not really.” Or maybe I’m the only one that does that. In any case, the fact remains that sometimes words aren’t quite enough. That could be explained by a deficit in vocabulary, but I still think there are some concepts that simply cannot be completely defined in words.

For those of you who are wondering why I’m ranting about words and definitions, I assure you that it does relate to our reading. Augustine often talks about how he, as a mortal man, cannot fully understand much less define many concepts. In his discussion of time in Book 11, he talks about how no words can accurately capture the reality of past, present, and future. We have these words that are inaccurate, yet everybody understands what they are. Augustine says this much more eloquently: “There are few usages of everyday speech which are exact, and most of our language is inexact. Yet what we mean is communicated” (11.26). Isn’t it fascinating that we can communicate such complex ideas with such imperfect language?

Seriously, people have developed words for indescribable things. Take emotions for instance. How did we ever get a word for that feeling of extreme enthusiasm and liveliness (that would be effervescence). Or what about the fact that there are synonyms but each synonym is a little different from the other? No two words mean exactly the same thing; that’s why they're separate words. But emotions aren’t the only things that are hard to define. Have you ever heard of petrichor? I absolutely love petrichor and I am so glad that I now know the word for it. It took way too long to try and describe it before.

All this talk about words and I haven’t even touched on the subject of separate languages! Augustine wrote this in Latin originally, yet we are able to translate it into English and read it. That’s because every language needs words for these complicated concepts. Did you know that different languages develop similarly? For example, words for colors develop along a similar line. First, there is only a word for light and a word for dark. Then red comes on the scene. Next yellow and green, followed by blue, then brown. The other colors come along after that in no particular order. I think it is amazing that languages develop so similarly, specifically in the area of color. It just goes to show that God designed humanity in such a way that we would be able to communicate.

We have such complex minds, we need some way of sharing that and God gave it to us. So, whether we’re talking to our friend about a thing that is like a word but not really or reading a saint’s translated musings about time, we are able to communicate and understand our thoughts and feelings. It’s crazy how our human languages are able to do that. As a wise mythological god and Avenger once said, “all words are made-up.” Yet these made-up words are able to capture things such as time and convey them to others. Or they can be overused by an enthusiastic girl who finds the smallest concept in her homework and blows it up into two pages of rambling. If you made it this far, I am seriously impressed. You managed to survive my lengthy blog post. I applaud you. Bonus points if you got the Hamlet reference in my title. P.S. I commented on Gray's and Will's posts.