[elky] Re: Words (Non) (long, but full of content)

From: "Rick Draganowski" <dragan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <elky@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 11:33:53 -0800
I am with you Frank. Jet engine, rocket motor. It is a strange and wonderful 
world but words do have meaning.

Rick Draganowski
(Soli Deo Gloria)

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: STILLFRANKSFAULT@xxxxxxx 
  To: elky@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Sunday, February 07, 2010 8:35 AM
  Subject: [elky] Re: Words (Non) (long, but full of content)


  I take no sides, but I did get bothered over the use of the word (motor) when 
used to describe an internal combustion engine. Yet the use of the word is 
everywhere. So, I go with the flow. I may never say (hey, what size motor ya 
got in there)
  ELECTRIC motor, COMBUSTION engine.
  OK, just my two cents. 

  -Smoky Mt Frank- D'OH


  In a message dated 2/7/2010 11:16:55 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, 
rbuck@xxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
    At 07:21 AM 2/7/2010, you wrote:



      I doubt there was much computer games being played in 1350. I rest my 
case.

      Gaming is gambling.

      Rick Draganowski
      (Soli Deo Gloria)


                 Yes but it isn't 1350 and the meanings of words change to adapt
      to the current spoken and written language. The dictionary is not set in
      stone it's constantly being updated by having words removed and added. Not
      enough are removed though.


                  Robert Adams


    I was gonna send an off list reply, but these two posts have led me to put 
the whole thing here.  It's long, it's pedantic and it's tedious.  Just the 
kinda stuff I tend to write.  Continue at your own peril.

    At 08:38 PM 2/6/2010, you wrote:

      Just my point Ray. One word cannot have two totally valid meanings and 
still be understandable in a reasonably literate sentence. That way lies 
madness. As Humpty Dumpty said.  "Words mean what I say they do." Humpty Dumpty 
declared. 'No more, and no less.'

    I have to disagree.  That way lies color and imagination.  Look at 
homonyms.  "Won word cannot have too valid meanings and still bee 
understandable inn..." and so on.  These are fairly obvious when written but 
can lead to misunderstandings when spoken.  How about this one?

    "Van Morrison and Jim Morrison were on their way to Jim Morrison's gym in 
Van Morrison's van." or was it the other way around? "Jim Morrison and Van 
Morrison were on their way to Van Morrison's gym in Jim Morrison's van."  That 
one is pretty old and I can't find the rest of it, but it makes light of 
homonyms, as does the writing of Ogden Nash and Shel Silverstein ( 
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/shel_silverstein ) whose writings and 
poems I shared with my sons when they were young.  

    Then there's Bob Dylan's "Subterrainean Homesick Blues":

    Mixing up the medicine
    I’m on the pavement
    Thinking about the government
    The man in the trench coat
    Badge out, laid off
    Says he’s got a bad cough
    Wants to get it paid off
    Look out kid
    It’s somethin’ you did
    God knows when
    But you’re doin’ it again
    You better duck down the alley way
    Lookin’ for a new friend
    The man in the coon-skin cap
    In the big pen
    Wants eleven dollar bills
    You only got ten

    Maggie comes fleet foot
    Face full of black soot
    Talkin’ that the heat put
    Plants in the bed but
    The phone’s tapped anyway
    Maggie says that many say
    They must bust in early may
    Orders from the d. a.
    Look out kid
    Don’t matter what you did
    Walk on your tip toes
    Don’t try no doz
    Better stay away from those
    That carry around a fire hose
    Keep a clean nose
    Watch the plain clothes
    You don’t need a weather man
    To know which way the wind blows

    Get sick, get well
    Hang around a ink well
    Ring bell, hard to tell
    If anything is goin’ to sell
    Try hard, get barred
    Get back, write braille
    Get jailed, jump bail
    Join the army, if you fail
    Look out kid
    You’re gonna get hit
    But losers, cheaters
    Six-time users
    Hang around the theaters
    Girl by the whirlpool
    Lookin’ for a new fool
    Don’t follow leaders
    Watch the parkin’ meters

    Ah get born, keep warm
    Short pants, romance, learn to dance
    Get dressed, get blessed
    Try to be a success
    Please her, please him, buy gifts
    Don’t steal, don’t lift
    Twenty years of schoolin’
    And they put you on the day shift
    Look out kid
    They keep it all hid
    Better jump down a manhole
    Light yourself a candle
    Don’t wear sandals
    Try to avoid the scandals
    Don’t wanna be a bum
    You better chew gum
    The pump don’t work
    ’cause the vandals took the handles

    Rational discourse?  What means that in light of those lyrics?  But there 
was a definite message in it and it was only apparent to those who were willing 
to look for it.  More on that subject in my reference to Shakespeare.



      Thus ends rational discourse.
       
      BTW I think more computers are used in "gaming" (Gambling) than in 
playing video games style "gaming". I am sure more money is involved.

    Absolutely.  Burroughs had several Medium Systems in big casinos in Las 
Vegas in the 70s.  The stories I heard were...well, let's just say that the 
security measures were on a par with Ft. Knox.  That was only to handle the 
money.  With what's available now, everything has to be wired.  I'm not sure 
what the casinos are doing now, but at one time, people were walking out of 
them because playing for "play money" wasn't attractive.
    http://www.zytec.biz/casino.htm  Check this out for information about 
computer controlled (or at least connected) gambling devices.



      Another neat concept is the one where Gambling Casinos use the term 
"Gaming" to eliminate the negative connotations of "Gambling" so once again we 
slide down the slippery slope. I wonder if you play video games at Casinos? 
Perhaps for money?

    Yes.  Video poker is a good example.  It's a representation of 5-card stud 
poker and the video game version and the casino version are almost identical 
with the exception of the actual money being involved.  Another aspect is that 
on-line casinos and gambling is big business:
    http://www.topusaonlinecasinos.com/



      So just the small word "gaming" is filled with cognative dissonance and 
means simultaneously a child hunched over an X-Box and killing something in a 
video game and a drunken person at a roulette wheel throwing away his mortgage 
money. Hmm.. Perhaps both. It could be that one leads to the other. Or am I 
losing it?

    It's one of the aspects of language.  You may be losing it, but language is 
so filled with nuances that in most spoken (and in some cases written) language 
is inherently ambiguous.  English is filled with multiple entendres, homonyms, 
and other pitfalls of multiple usage.  One just hit me and it's almost 
identical in its dissonance: "boxing."  A mental picture of someone happily 
putting a Christmas gift into a cardboard container or two pugilists trying to 
beat one another's brains out.  What's the difference?  



      Words mean something, and alternate (and temporary) meanings are just 
sops for the ignorant in my perhaps less than humble opinion. 

    English is a polyglot derivative language.  It's impossible to be 
absolutely precise in such a tongue.  There's a good example right there.  
"Tongue" can mean a  language, a variant of a language or a part of the body or 
a part of a piece of wood or a part of a trailer, ad naseum.   
www.dictionary.com  shows 22 different uses for the word.  Now, use it as a 
verb and it further complicates the issue.  There are an additional 5 meanings 
there.  Add different conjugations of the verb and declensions of the noun and 
the ambiguity increases almost exponentially.



      So I stick firmly to my guns. And if communication means nothing to my 
gentle readers perhaps the imprecise direction we seem to be going into 21st 
Century "Newspeak" is the most comforting recourse. 

    Well, Rick, go back your Shakespeare and you'll see that he used words in 
much the same way.  Here's just one example: 
http://www.compleatheretic.com/pubs/literary/eng211no2.html  In this case, much 
cloaked reference is made to the characters and in a beautiful part at the end, 
"morning becomes mourning."  

    Another that I doubt you have much familiarity with is the lyric of the 
song, "The Battle of Evermore" by Led Zeppelin.  Before you dismiss it out of 
hand as you're wont to do (there's another homonym) read the words, read the 
analysis (here's a good one: http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=332 ) and 
listen to the song.  It's anything but a headbashing heavy metal song.  It's 
also the only song in which an additional singer is used, in this case, Sandy 
Denny of Fairport Convention.  

    Here are the lyrics.  I find them beautiful:

    Led Zeppelin - The Battle of Evermore

    With Sandy Denny from Fairport Convention

    Robert Plant wrote the lyrics after reading a book on Scottish history. The 
lyrics are about the everlasting battle between night and day, which can also 
be interpreted as the battle between good and evil.
    Plant felt he needed another voice to tell the story. He was the narrator 
and Sandy Denny represented the people as the town crier.

    Queen of light took her bow
    And then she turned to go,
    The prince of peace embraced the gloom
    And walked the night alone.
    Oh, dance in the dark of night,
    Sing to the morning light.
    The dark lord rides in force tonight
    And time will tell us all.
    Oh, throw down your plow and hoe,
    Rest not to lock your homes.
    Side by side we wait the might
    Of the darkest of them all.

    I hear the horses thunder
    Down in the valley below,
    I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon,
    Waiting for the eastern glow.
    The apples of the valley hold,
    The seas of happiness,
    The ground is rich from tender care,
    Repay, do not forget, no, no.
    Oh,-------dance in the dark of night,
    Sing to the morning light.
    The apples turn to brown and black, the tyrants face is red.
    Oh the war is common cry, pick up your swords and fly.
    The sky is filled with good and bad
    That mortals never know.

    Oh, well, the night is long, the beads of time pass slow,
    Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow.
    The pain of war cannot exceed
    The woe of aftermath,
    The drums will shake the castle wall,
    The ring wraiths ride in black, ride on.
    Sing as you raise your bow,
    Shoot straighter than before.
    No comfort has the fire at night
    That lights the face so cold.
    Oh dance in the dark of night,
    Sing to the morning light.
    The magic runes are writ in gold
    To bring the balance back, bring it back.
    At last the sun is shining, the clouds of blue roll by,
    With flames from the dragon of darkness
    The sunlight blinds his eyes.

    There are several recorded versions of this song.  I just listened to one 
that I'd never paid a lot of attention to before.  It's done by Jimmy Page and 
Robert Plant in a live performance with Najma Akhtar singing the part Denny 
sang in one performance and in the studio recording.   
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Najma_Akhtar

    As I listened to it, the hair on my arms stood up and tears came to my 
eyes.  It's a very powerful song when viewed as discourse between the town 
crier and the narrator as the battle between light and dark is described at two 
levels: 1) light of day and dark of night and 2) Light of good and dark of 
evil.  

    If you choose to listen to the studio recording (which is closer to the 
above lyric than the live Page and Plant version) it's here: 
www.chevyasylum.com\music\LedZeppelin .  It's 8mb, but I strongly suggest 
giving it a listen.  

    Taking this one step further, blues music is filled with metaphor, simile 
and allegory.  One could make a case for that genre to be the pinnacle of 
hidden meanings.  This was done for several reasons.  First, the blues roots of 
field hollers and moans dates from the time where slaves (and later, prisoners) 
couldn't explicitly refer to the masters for whom they worked, so misdirection 
and hidden meaning was used.  Later, it became a bit of a game or I suppose one 
could call it a valid musical form to avoid explicit lyrics.  In Robert 
Johnson's song, "Traveling Riverside Blues," one can hear Johnson saying, "You 
know what I'm talkin about?"  In the Eric Clapton version, he says (not sings), 
"That's what I'm talkin about."  In these lyrics, they're referring to "squeeze 
my lemon til the juice runs down my leg."  Pretty obvious, but a metaphor 
nonetheless.

    Referring back to your initial example, "Humpty Dumpty," that's nothing BUT 
misdirection:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty including the part that you 
quote from "Through the looking Glass."  I was surprised to read that what I'd 
read years ago about it referring to the English civil war was, in fact, based 
on a spoof written in 1956.  Circles within circles and mysteries wrapped in 
conundrums.  (Should that be "conundra?"...never mind, it was a rhetorical 
question.)  In any case, in the phrase, "Words mean what I say they do." Humpty 
Dumpty declared. 'No more, and no less.' (punctuation error excused), you make 
my case for me in that words are defined by their user, not always by a 
commonly accepted definition or one that resides in a dictionary.

    Speaking of dictionaries, look at the archaic meanings of words and you'll 
see how language evolves.  By strictly clinging to a definition of only one 
period, one severely limits oneself in comprehension.  And even if one chooses 
to accept only one period's usage of a word, then he cannot accurately use 
definitions of other words from other periods.  That is to say, that when using 
the word, "gaming" exclusively in its 16th century form would then put the 
author/speaker/reader/listener into the 16th century and thereby lose meaning 
of just about every other word in a given sentence or entire lexicon.  



      Thanks for your patience

    What patience?  Here's the way I see it.  You call yourself a writer and a 
poet.  I can call myself a writer and an editor, because I do those things, 
too.  If you consider online content to be "published" I have far more 
published work than you.  In my writings (and I believe in yours, too) 
ambiguity is sometimes used on purpose and sometimes used inadvertently.  Tead 
what I've written so far in my Early Daze re-write: 
http://chevyasylum.com/earlydaze/Welcome.html 

    I wish I could give you examples of your usage in this manner, but I've 
wasted WAY too much time on this discourse and have to get on with today's 
project which is to install online forum software ( 
http://www.simplemachines.org/ ) on my web server for www.saveourshipofstate.us 
, a project I'm working on with a friend from the salt flats racing community.

    No rest for the weary.

    r



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References:
- [elky] Re: Words (Non) (long, but full of content)
  - From: STILLFRANKSFAULT
[elky] Re: Words (Non) (long, but full of content)

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