Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me is a children’s rhyme from the first half of the 1800’s. I remember chanting it as a kid. Maybe you do, too. But now we find ourselves in a time when the meaning of words is changing and, I believe, changing in order to confuse and, well, hurt. How in the world could a word hurt you? Just picture a stop sign that changes its word to go.

Actions stem from beliefs which stem from conclusions. Let’s consider for a minute the way people reach a logical conclusion about something. (If one of you says you just go with what everyone else thinks, I’m going to need an aspirin.) First, a word is needed, and words fit together to form a sentence which is strung together with other sentences in a paragraph. Grammar is what we call the study of meanings of words and how to use them in a way that is commonly understood.

On the way to reaching our conclusion, we consider words in light of other facts and truth that we know. We use logic to do so. (Some people say there is both objective and subjective logic, which is like saying my truth and your truth. It muddles fact and truth with opinion or perspective. Please don’t do that.) In our analysis, we look for context. For instance, sometimes a word means one thing and when used another way or in light of other sentences it means something else.

Once we’ve reached our logical conclusion, we might tell someone else about it. Or write about it. Or even preach about it. The fancy word for this is rhetoric. When people disagree with someone, they might even be dismissive of them by saying something like It’s just rhetoric, with the intention of insinuating that their words are just speech without substance.

So now that we have listed the three things necessary for reasoning (grammar, logic, and rhetoric), we should be able to reach a fairly logical conclusion. Those of you who prefer technology to pen and paper, think of a computer program. I’m not familiar with that sort of thing, but it has a language of its own, doesn’t it? You can recognize whether a pattern fits or not. Likewise, we make an effort to see whether something is logical by noticing a pattern and whether something is out of order in the rhetoric. Ah! There’s a bug there! It deserves a closer look to see if something is wrong! (Another “bug” would be if, in our analysis, we consider words in light of errant facts we believe to be true but are not. Or – horrors! – if we’ve been misled to believe something to be true when it isn’t, and depend on that as a fact to use as a compass. I imagine at this point, everyone is pointing their collective finger at everyone else. But that’s another essay.)

Now to my point. Although words sometimes change meanings throughout history, of late words have been co-opted in order to dress up one thought to make it look like another. The words gay and equity are an example. While gay used to mean happy or light-hearted, most people think of homosexual now. Can we really marry one meaning to another in this instance?  Equity means how much you have invested in an asset – the amount you’ve already paid for a home, for instance, subtracted from its total cost. Or it can mean giving people equal treatment. Recently, it appears that its meaning is beginning to transform into the Marxist idea of equal outcomes regardless of input. I hope that’s not the case for everyone, but it’s something I’ve noticed. And when it is used that way, it really isn’t equitable at all, but is actually inequitable. Maybe you find yourself thinking along with Inigo Montoya, You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

When we communicate, we hope to be (to use a phrase) “on the same page” as far as the meaning of our words. But sometimes now we are not. If the meaning of words is changed, it removes our ability to understand what is actually being said. It reduces our ability to use logic and analysis. In fact, for those who don’t give much thought to the importance of words, they might easily fall into whatever rhetoric a fast-talking, persuasive fellow gives them. The rhetoric might be full of emotion, but lack any reasonable logic, leading to faulty conclusions. Put another way, they will believe something that in the end will hurt them or lead them to do something they will regret.  Taking it a step further – without a word to describe a thought, what happens to the thought? Ah yes. Critical thinking, where have you gone?

I’ll add one more thing. The Bible tells us that life and death are in the power of tongue. I didn’t always consider the enormous possibilities of that statement (both positive and negative), but I do now.

Image: Public-Domain.-Giuseppe_Maria_Crespi_-_Bookshelves_-_WGA05755.jpg; The three tools of reason are sometimes referred to as the Trivium, which is part of a classical education; there are many words being changed to mislead, such as the word vaccine; Quote from The Princess Bride, 1987 William Goldman book and movie adaptation, Directed by Rob Reiner; Proverbs 18:21