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Words you inherited
Which of your words did you go out and get, and which were simply in the house you grew up in? Name one of each.
Much of your vocabulary arrived before you could choose it. Ask what changes when you go out and get a word for yourself.
Your answer
A little context
There's a word your grandmother used that you've never heard anyone else say, and it comes out of your mouth when you're tired or moved. There's another you picked up at twenty, from a book or a teacher, and you still feel a small pride each time you use it right. One feels like part of you; the other feels earned.
Nearby questions
- Have you ever made up a word because no real one fit?Families and friends keep words nobody else knows. Wittgenstein doubted a word could mean anything if only one person could check it.
- Can you think without words?Wittgenstein wrote that the limits of his language meant the limits of his world. Yet everyone has felt something they had no word for.
- Is the sentence 'This sentence is false' true or false?If it's true, then it's false. If it's false, then it's true. The puzzle is more than two thousand years old.
- When you say 'I'm fine', are you lying?A story improved in the telling, a confident guess, an 'I'm fine' at the dinner table: plenty of what we say isn't trying to inform anyone.
- What does a name change?When you give something a name — a pet, a car, a machine — what changes: the thing, what you owe it, or you?
