EVERY WORD WAS ONCE A POEM

EVERY WORD WAS ONCE A POEM

Every word was once a poem. Each began as a picture. Our language is made up of terms that were all originally figures of speech.

Sometimes the pictures can be rediscovered and restored so that their beauty will once more be seen. At other times the attrition of the ages has worn the images away and obliterated them so that no trace is left.

It can’t surprise us that our language began with metaphors. Words are being made today under our own eyes in precisely the same fashion. Witness the terse and vivid terms that the gangsters coin; gun moll, for the racketeer’s girl-friend; hot seat, for the electric chair; stool pigeon, for the traitor who acts as a spy for the police.

Such terms as these may not all live of course, but they still show us language in the making. A few hundred years from now other etymologists will be researching to unearth the early stories behind such of these words as survive, even as we are now doing with the words of long ago.

It is unfortunate, in a way, that we learn words when we are so very young, for as we become adult we take these strange symbols for granted. By then there is little of mystery in them for us. We are apt to think vaguely that words just happened and were always so. We have no sharp feeling that they were born much as babies are born. That they are vibrant with life and are always changing. That they grow up and often, like us, take on the greater responsibilities that go with maturity. And that, by the end of their days, for die they often do, they will frequently have life histories as long and distinguished as human biographies in a copy of Who’s Who.

To know the past of an individual helps us to understand him the better. To know the life history of a word makes its present meaning clearer and more nearly unforgettable. And besides all this, the stories in and of themselves are often packed with romance and adventure and lead us far away into the fields of mythology and history and of great names and great events. Words truly are little windows through which we can look into the past.

(From Dr. Wilfred Funk: WORD ORIGINS)

I regard the noble American lexicographer [late?] Dr. Wilfred Funk as My guru while I regard [late?] Professor Norman Lewis as My greatest teacher and scholarly Peter Funk, worthy son of Dr. Wilfred Funk, as My perennial source of inspiration.

Satan = Kr. [?]

K.S. = God

Kishalay Sinha [G]