Words and language in general have always been of interest to me. Dictionaries, thesauri, and as I grew older, the AP Stylebook usually resided on my desk. Now we tend to rely more on the Internet and technology in general for these references. For instance, I receive a “word of the day” in my email. When querying about the name of a movie, piece of history or current affairs tidbit in our home and failing to recall the correct answer, we tend to exclaim – “to the Googles”. This interesting and somewhat humorous topic was discussed in The Salisbury Post out of South Carolina in their article, “Clyde: Dictionaries and the words we say — or don’t.”
In our current climate, both politically and culturally, words take on different meanings. In some cases, words have become more hurtful, more damning and more threatening. However, the same words can be used to inspire, condone, praise, thank, and unite. Choose carefully.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
