Words Have Meaning

Words are important to me. They are a tool I work with. They also happen to be useful in conveying what is in one person’s mind to another person’s mind. Words are closely connected with thoughts. So when someone controls words in an attempt to control thoughts, that is a very intrusive and serious form of tyranny.

There are various ways of resisting thought/word control. Logic—which will include dictionaries, word histories, and modern usage. Refusal—which includes ignoring attempts at control and maybe rebellious increase in the condemned word. And humor—including mocking.

I’m not comfortable with mocking—particularly of individuals. But there are certainly ideas ridiculous enough to be worth mocking. And maybe humor is a better response to the ridiculous than many other ways. I wish I were better at responding with humor. (New Year’s goal, maybe.)

Cartoon found on Facebook

Let’s start this discussion with a personal story. We have a relative, someone rather tangentially connected by marriage for now, who has changed her name. She didn’t have an ugly name. The claim was it was to avoid stalking by a family member of hers, but she afterward reconnected with the very person who had always given away her location in the past. So—that was stupid.

I’m altering her name in a way that allows me to talk about the idea without giving any identifying info. Let’s say she changed her first name from Amanda to Ivorson—no, not spelled like that. Her soon-to-be-ex accidentally spelled it that way and got a chewing out. It’s Ivorsen—because she doesn’t want the male word “son” in there, because men are horrible.

When I was told this, I said, “So she wants her name to mean ‘son of Ivor’ in Norwegian instead of ‘son of Ivor’ in Swedish?” Because that is the difference between "-sen" and "-son." If you don’t want the name to mean “son of” the father, then you use the suffix “dotter.” As in Ivorsdotter (sometimes spelled dotr, depending on the country). The names are literal that way. I have in my family files a woman whose surname is Andersdotter; she is the daughter of Anders Jonson—who of course is the son of Jon something. That’s how it works in Scandinavian family history.

So Amanda/Ivorsen went to the trouble of legally changing her name and had no idea what the name she was choosing meant. (She also changed her last name, but I literally can’t even remember to what, because it also had no particular heritage or meaning.) The irony is that she insisted some years ago that the family leave a nice home and steady career in Texas, because she couldn’t stand the lack of intellectuals here (including us, apparently).

Next story. A week ago the representative, a former pastor, who opened the 117^th Congress with prayer ended it with “Amen and Awomen.” Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up.

Urban Dictionary: Awomen

A bastardized English-Hebrew term that translates to "I am an idiot," commonly used in the Hebrew phrase "amen, and awomen," which translates to "I am an idiot, and so be it." It is also used colloquially, to express strong ignorance of Judeo-Christianity.

The term “Amen,” as you may be familiar, is a common way to close a prayer or as a term of agreement, meaning in Hebrew “let it be so.” It is unrelated in every way to the English word men, which is the plural of man, which can mean a male of the human species, or sometimes more broadly to mankind, or humankind, including both males and females.

found on Facebook

Doing stupid things tends to bring about unintended un“woke”consequences. This made me laugh:

Meme found on Facebook

In that spirit of humor, I thought it might be fun to point out how ridiculous altering “men,” “man,” “him,” “his,” “son,” and other word parts from the language would be.

 

Word unrelated to maleness	Femalized version of the word	Meaning of the femalized version of the word
Abdomen	Abdowomen	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Abridgement	Abridgewoment	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Acumen	Acuwomen	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Amanda (name)	Awomanda	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Bison	Bidaughter	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Boson	Bodaughter	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Commensurate	Comwomensurate	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Consonant	Condaughterant	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Demand	Dewomand	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Frisson	Frisdaughter	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
History	Herstory	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Histrionics	Herstrionics	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Humanitarian	Huwomanitarian	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Hymen	Hywomen	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Hymn	Hermn	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Judgment	Judgwoment	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Maneuverable	Womaneuverable	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Manilla	Womanilla	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Mansion	Womansion	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Mantel	Womantel	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Manual	Womanual	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Manufactured	Womanufactured	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Mensch	Womensch	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Mental	Womental	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Mention	Womention	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Necromancy	Necrowomancy	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Nomenclature	Nowomenclature	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Permanent	Perwomanent	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Roman	Rowoman	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Romantic	Rowomantic	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Semantics	Sewomantics	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Sonar	Daughterar	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
Sonic	Daughteric	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.
This	Thers	I am an idiot and don't understand how to use words.

Thank you, Babylon Bee, for playing the game:

 

from The Babylon Bee, found here

It turns out, if you’re playing Scrabble, you can go online and search for words that contain certain letters. Depending on your source, there are around 6525 words that contain “man” and 5883 that contain “men.” The vast majority of these words have nothing to do with maleness.

In many languages, nouns have gender, which determines the article that goes with them. Some nouns apply to men and logically have a masculine gender, like “el hombre,” which means “the man” and has the masculine article “el.” Some have nothing to do with who uses them, but are simply a result of the way the language developed, like “la mesa,” which means “the table,” with a feminine article for reasons that have nothing to do with the femininity of tables in general. There is not a numerical preference for either male or female gendered nouns; they’re about equally distributed.

If you’re going to go about your life looking to be offended by a set of letters, and you assign a meaning to those letters that the rest of humanity does not share, you not only fail to communicate, you simply have a stupid way of going through life, making yourself and those around you miserable.

But this is all part of a larger issue: freedom of speech. The representative who gave the “woke” prayer and is being ridiculed for his stupid misuse of the language will not be censored for it; by other would-be "woke" folk, he is admired. But if I say the un“woke” truth that there are only two sexes for human beings, I could get censored, deplatformed, doxed, and prevented from making a living. That more serious issue is something we’re likely to encounter more and more in upcoming days—if we can keep finding a place to talk about it.