This is a Dictionary; Don't Make Me Smack You with It.

A few years ago a couple of co-workers of mine got into a conversation about gun control one night.  One of them went off on the typical conservative rant on the subject, and I pretty much kept quiet and stayed out of it.  It's not that I have particularly strong opinions about gun control.  Sometimes it's the thought process, or lack of it, that went into the formation of a person's opinions that's more of a problem than the actual opinion itself.  It's like having a guy tell you that they shouldn't have trials for rapists; they should just execute them on the spot.  It's not that you're pro-rape.  You just know that you'd be wasting your breath arguing the merits of due process with a person like that.

There's a 30 day waiting period, Comrade.

So anyway, at one point, as this guy was ranting along at a nice pace, he mentioned something about gun control being "communist."  He kept hammering away at this point.  After he had dropped the word for the fourth or fifth time, I couldn't restrain myself any longer from throwing my two cents in.  "Communism is an economic system", I told him, "It really has nothing to do with gun control at all.  You're thinking of 'totalitarianism'.  People usually confuse the two terms, because communism in practice tends to lead to totalitarianism, but it's not the same thing.  Communism is just the equal redistribution of wealth.  That's it."  Naturally these guys looked at me like I had just landed here from another planet, and eventually the whole thing somehow led to me having to have this stupid conversation with someone yet again.  I probably should have just kept my mouth shut. 

But as a writer, I get very annoyed when people abuse the language and carelessly throw words around without knowing what they mean.  It seems like it happens the most with derogatory terms, or at least terms with derogatory overtones.  It's the overtones that people really enjoy.  They just love how insulting a word sounds, and they're not going to let a little thing like meaning slow them down when they're really on a roll.  Some people even have their favorite term of reproach that they use to pass judgment on nearly everything.  My mother is a very religious person and she throws around the term "humanistic" as though she were being paid for every use.  The pastor at the church we went to when I was kid gave a sermon on Humanism once, and she's been entralled with the term ever since.  Any type of idea, theory, or practice of any kind that leaves God out of the equation is denounced as "humanistic" in her book.  The IRS is probably humanistic for not praying before they send out our 1099 forms.

 The internet is a fertile breeding ground for misused words.  "Irony" alone has a long and confused history.  At first it was used indiscriminately to describe any coincidence, cleverness, or circumlocution.  Any chain of events that fell together in a neat way was applauded for being "ironic."  This vast electronic market of words was flooded with the term.  But then the backlash set in.  These days it's the in thing to instantly attack anyone who uses the word.  Whisper the word "irony" in even the most obscure corner of the web and someone will immediately pop up and dismiss you as idiot.  Ironically, there seems to be no acceptable definition of the word that anyone can agree on.  To be fair, irony is a somewhat elusive concept and I've yet to find a dictionary that really does the word justice.  I've always thought of it as a twisted connection between cause and effect, but I'm not sure that really covers it either.

The internet even struggles with its own special terminology.  There are not enough bridges in all of the kingdom to provide shelter for everyone that gets labeled as a "troll" on a message board.  The word was useful enough to begin with, and it designated a certain specific phenomenon.  It's a person who deliberately irritates and mocks people on a forum, solely for the sake of getting a reaction.  There's no real sincerity behind anything they say.  They just want to piss people off.  Period.  That's a troll, plain and simple; nothing more, nothing less.  Yet, people call anyone they don't like or anyone who irritates them a "troll", and the word has become completely devalued as a result.  It's like "Epic Fail"; it's become a cheap insult, ready at hand, and easy to use....and virtually meaningless at this point. Someone gets mad, and the "T-word" starts flying.  Yeah!  That'll show 'em! 

I try my best to be conscientious with the words I use.  I confess that I also have a special affection for certain words; I just like the way they sound.  But I try to make sure I know what the word actually means before I use it, especially if I'm preserving my own words in writing.  There are times in the course of working on post like this that I'll have a word that I'm planning to use, and I'll be pretty sure I know what it means or I'll kind of have a vague idea.  In those cases I'll always look it up.  In fact, I've done it three times during the writing of this post, and no, I'm not telling you which words.  Some things are best kept a trade secret.  Anyhow, I have to say, I have an almost perfect track record.  The word nearly always means just what I thought it meant.  But it's always better to double check and be sure.  I'd hate to get caught with my pants down and end up looking like an idiot because I confused the difference between "affect" and "effect".  Which brings me to another story:

About nine years ago I was working as night security guard at a salt mine.  It was just a few months after the Sept. 11th attack.  One night, just around shift change, a semi truck pulled into the lot.  There were two Arab men in the truck, and they got out to ask me for directions to a nearby town.  As we stood there and I gave the men directions, the 2nd shift miners were leaving and they all stared as they passed us in the parking-lot.  Tension was running high then, of course.  A few hours later I got a call from one of the miners, and he starting going into this whole thing about how he had noticed that the semi's trailer wasn't properly sealed.   "I don't mean to sound like a pedophile.", he told me.  Well, the thought hadn't really crossed my mind until then.  I didn't have the heart to explain his mistake to him.  I can only hope that he doesn't find himself feeling paranoid around the wrong people.

Anyway, so I do my homework.  Big deal.  Still, I feel like I owe it to myself and to anyone else who has the misfortune to be listening to me, to try to know what I'm talking about if I'm going to bother opening my mouth.  At the very least, I can get the words right.  If I started tossing around any multi-syllabic gems that I've picked up in my travels with reckless abandon, then I'd risk the possibility of exposing myself as a fool and coming off looking pretentious.  And don't even get me started on that word.