iconWhat is the Meaning of a Word



What does it mean to love someone? What does it mean to love ourselves? What is true love? Each day we describe our “love” for things – “I love that song,” “I love coffee in the morning,” “I love you.” With the frequency we use this word and others like it, it only makes sense that we’ve lost the true meaning, the true impact of the weight this term really has.

When we use a phrase or a word over and over again in everyday language we take away some of it’s meaning, some of the magical quality it has to describe special moments or feelings in our lives. If we love our family, love coffee, love television, does that mean we love our family as much as a beverage? Of course not, but with our rampant misuse of the word we strip it of is sparkle.

Love is a lofty notion that we have taken down from it’s high seat and trotted through the mud of everyday life. A great philosopher said the meaning of a word is in it’s use, but what if that word is overused and misused? I would argue that it looses some of its meaning in this sense, it loses some of the essence that makes the word unique in our language.

This isn’t to say that words have essential meanings, part of the versatility of our language is to repurpose words to mean new things – but should we be doing this with words that speak of feelings and situations that make up the extraordinary parts of our existence?

By overusing words such as love, hate, want, and need we distort their meanings and gray our language subtracting from the full impact its meant to have. Think about what you’re saying before you say it, there are probably better words for you to use that will have more impact than these once magical, now blanket terms we’ve all come to rely on in our everyday life. Save the special words for the moments that really mean the most in your life.

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