I've been thinking about words recently. This happens mainly because of my almost 5 year old. He never really went through a "why" stage. He kind of circumvented it with "what." He comes up to me all throughout the day, asking "What does this mean?" "What does that mean?" "What kind of burger are we having?" So, there's lots of questions, just not why questions.
His newest trend is to ask what a random word means. Examples: except. Awkward. Neither. Actually. We're not talking the easy to define words here. Have you ever tried to define except? Without using a dictionary? Yeah. Not easy. Many of the words he asks about, my response is automatically, "It just means _________ (repeating the word to him again.)"
Sometimes, I ask him what he thinks the word means. For instance, awkward. His definition of awkward is when people eat in a silly way. I'm pretty sure that is awkward, but his use of that word with that specific definition will probably end up being awkward for him later.
I guess the point of this is that we use words every day. And a lot of the time, we don't even have a concrete definition of what the word means. You use it. You know how to use it. How often could you define it, if someone asked you to?
What are your favorite words?
*Sorry for the long absence. I'm still working out a few kinks and that may mean that the blogging schedule becomes really unscheduled. What I mean to say is, I'll blog when I can. And hopefully, it will be more often than not.
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