Swimming in words

What if we imagined that we lived inside the language, a fish breathing in the ocean? Writers swim inside words. When you see words from the inside out, you learn the absence of pure synonyms. Sofa is no longer interchangeable with couch.

Roy Peter Clark, Murder Your Darlings

Sofa or couch?

Swimming inside the language may not always be a good thing. Consider the difficulty had by the first black woman appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States when she was asked to define what a woman is. She didn't know, thanks to the way political considerations have poisoned the language. Ketanji Brown Jackson, like so many people these days, wasn't so much swimming as drowning.

Yet Roy Peter Clark's advice seems wise on the whole. Writers, or anyone else who uses the English language, should be aware of the associations and connotations that words have. A sofa is not necessarily a couch. A fragrance is not necessarily an odor. Mirth is not necessarily levity.

English is blessed with a broad vocabulary. Over the centuries we've picked up words from Anglo-Saxon, French, Latin, Greek, Spanish and numerous other languages. We tend to use Anglo-Saxon words when we want to make our points bluntly and French-based or Latin-based words when we want to put on airs. The words may mean the same thing in the dictionary, but in real life they suggest shades of difference.

Of course, good writers and especially poets can sometime do something wonderful by choosing what may seem at first to be the wrong word but which, on reflection, offers a new insight.

Now if the next Supreme Court justice could only figure out who the heck we were honoring during Woman's History Month.