Living with a Condition

On the love of words

About four years ago, I was diagnosed with a very rare condition affecting my brain, specifically the Wernicke’s Area. You may be wondering what caused this condition. Genetics? Brain injury? Maternal drug use during pregnancy? The answer: a dictionary.

The condition that I am talking about is lexophilia: the love of words. Or, to give it its full definition: “a love for words and a fascination or obsession with playing with language, such as puns, wordplay, and wit.”

The love of words is quite an unusual passion for a teenage boy to have. Usually it’s beer, football, and girls. And whilst I’m not averse to any of these, I prefer being able to use obscure words to describe them: zythophile, tifoso, or philogynist. Ζύθος (zythos) is Ancient Greek for “beer,” and φίλος (philos) translates as “loving,” so we get zythophile as “a lover of beer.” Tifoso is an Italian word that captures the enthusiasm of sports followers much more than our English word “fan.” Its routes are fascinating — they come from the Italian word for typhoid, referring to the feverish behaviour of passionate fans. Isn’t that just great? I mean, not typhoid, but the etymology. A philogynist is essentially a lover of women (not just romantically, but in terms of admiration/respect); again, φίλος (philos, loving) and γυνή (gune, woman) from Ancient Greek.

But why do I love words? Is it because I’m sad and have nothing better to do with my free time? Yes. I also believe that a good word, a powerful word, carries the gift of unlocking new possibilities. Words give our lives meaning. There will be word-scrooges out there who call people who use ‘fancy’ words boastful, but why should we be conservative in our use of words when we have so many to choose from? Yes, we’ve all had those moments in conversations when someone uses a word which we don’t know. Most people’s reaction tends to be a sort of eye roll, and it ends at that — they just brush over the word they don’t know, and try to guess it from the context of the sentence. But I would urge you to start questioning words you don’t know. Why not ask the person, “I was interested in this word you used — what does it mean?” Or if that’s too bold, perhaps look it up after.

Paul Kotlarevsky, Portrait of a man reading

Words can be amusing too. Or, rather, when people get them wrong. There’s a word for that: malapropism. I’d like to share some great examples from within my own family. My grandmother once offered me “decapitated tea,” after which I now just drink water when visiting. Another relative labelled Sylvia Plath’s greatest work as “The Bell End” and, finally, my drama teacher at school, who said, “humans, at their most basic, are a group of orgasms interacting with each other.” I mean, this is Overheardrews level stuff.

With the task of producing an article on words, vagueness was my worst enemy, so I have homed in on certain groups of words that I find striking. Malapropisms are one. Another is ironically cruel medical impediment names. When naming the speech defect in which the speaker mispronounces s sounds, doctors thought it would make most sense to put an s in the word and call it a lisp. How about the learning disorder when someone struggles to read, write, or spell? They chose dyslexia. Or when someone has an involuntary stammer? Stutter (the triple t)! Or a fear of palindromes? Aibophobia. And, finally, a fear of long words: hippopotomonstrosesequipedaliaphobia.

Words also reflect culture and tradition. I particularly like the German words we have brought into our language to describe the most obscure concepts and situations so conveniently. We use zeitgeist to describe the spirit or mood of a particular period of history, freudentränen is the state of having tears of joy, and my personal favourite — torschlusspanik — the last-minute panic we get when approaching a deadline.

Words also contain power. So, we must use them carefully. As Rudyard Kipling once said, “words are the most powerful drug used by mankind.” What if some of the words we don’t use anymore disappear from our collective memory? For example, take a mobile phone. No one ever calls it that — people prefer ‘phone.’ But wait another 100 years and, given our lazy proclivities, it might well be called a ‘pho.’ My point is that language is evolving, but it’s also dying. At a rate of two languages a week, to be precise. So, reader, will you join me in my love of words? It is our job to keep them alive.

Image from Artvee