Sunday, November 25, 2012

Were you dissed?

The English language is perhaps the most expressive language in the world. Continually evolving from it's roots in Germany to the currently most used language in the world. The shear immensity of words available, allowing expression of thought, meaning and nuance is astounding. Several sources give a low quantity of 250,000 available words and that number could actually exceed 1,000,000. The top end is expanded, almost daily by the inclusion of new discoveries from science and the streets among others. 

To wit, DISSED. Strictly from the streets. Think it's a contraction of disrespected, itself a non-word. You respect or you don't respect. None the less we have a new word to place at the apex, right beside ain't. Yo man, you dissin me? Ain't!
If all these citizens could spell, perhaps some of glorious addendum would be redundant. Wrong word, they are redundant. Superfluous right! If you can not spell, how do you know what something means? How do you know you were insulted? With so many words to chose from why corrupt through ignorance? 

So many bright, witty people live by using our language. Writers, comics, wordsmiths all. What is an aphorist? The first is purported to have been Hippocrates. Basically it is someone that tells concise definitions of a principle. Henny Youngman told one-liners...same thing. We have an enormous vocabulary and an outstanding tool in "spell check". Is learning "not cool"? At my age I certainly want the physicians and pharmacists to have the ability to spell. It's in my long term best interests...yours too, if you think about it.

Aphorist is not my parting shot, "spell check" is!

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