Words Don't Technically Mean Anything

A response to a common misunderstanding

Jan 15, 2023

One more of these, "In your own words." You know you hear that a lot in a court room. Or a classroom, they'll say "tell us... in your own words." Do you have your own words? Hey, I'm using the ones everyone else has been using!

George Carlin

Everyone once in a while, you’ll encounter an argument like this:

“Could care less.” That implies that you do care! Obviously, the phrase is “couldn’t care less.” You clearly don’t understand what you’re saying!

I wonder what these people think of the German equivalent that translates to “it’s fully sausage to me.” We don’t understand words or phrases by breaking them into their individual parts. People like to craft phrases that express an old concept in a new way. When we want to make new words and phrases, our only options are old words and phrases. As Carlin reminds us, you don’t have your words.

Let’s just consider the quote above. If we break down “couldn’t care less,” it doesn’t work either. “Could” implies ability. A rock or a tree couldn’t care less. Unless you're in a coma, you could. Besides, think of the various idioms we use in English:

Beat around the bush
Cut corners
Miss the boat
The last straw

… and probably dozens more. If you break those phrases up word by word, you’re won’t find the true meaning. In fact, we don’t even need to resort to idiots to hammer this point home. Just consider the word “understand.” We don’t need a detective to figure out the etymology of this one: it’s “under” and “stand.” However, no one would bat an eye if you understood something while standing over it. We’re not shocked to learn that an underground movement took place entirely above the ground. No one gets wet when their company is underwater. We undertake tasks without taking anything under anywhere.

Even the usages that feel more literal still rely on some abstraction. A trader may purchase a stock that he sees as “undervalued.” What, exactly, is the value under? Numbers exist in our heads, and there’s no particular reason we should see lesser ones as standing under the greater ones. In fact, I don’t see numbers that way. I see greater numbers on the right and lower ones on the left. What about “underachieved?” Here’s the Wikipedia page for the 2022 World Cup. The page lists the final under the seminal, the semifinal under the quarterfinal, and so on. This seems like an intuitive way to list the results, even though it places the overachievers under the underachievers.

These phrases feel so natural that we can find ourselves grasping for straws to explain why they make sense

. Americans may be familiar with the “on accident” vs “by accident” split. Sometime in the 1990s, the phrase switched from the latter to the former. If you were born before the 90s, “by accident” probably sounds right. Meanwhile, I’ve always said, “on accident,” and the “by” version sounds stilted. If we step back for a second, we’ll realize this phrase doesn’t involve an accident occurring “by” or “on” anything. Yet, you’ll see people contort themselves to explain why their side makes more sense. Take this Reddit comment:

'By accident' is more technically correct because 'by' indicates the means that allows or causes [sic] something to occur. However, 'on accident" could be metaphorically correct because 'on' indicates being supported or upheld by something.

This sort of analysis can only derive from post hoc reasoning. If “by accident” is more literal, then why does no one say “by purpose?” Native speakers often fail to realize that prepositions have a mind of their own. A quick scan of our sister languages can show just how un-literal the preposition is. Here are some examples from Henry Stern’s Essential Dutch Grammar:

say against (English: say to)
wait on (English: wait for)
with vacation (English: on vacation)
love on (English: in love with)

In German, you’ll find multiple preposition rules with regard to movement. English speakers would travel “to” Germany, while a German would travel “after” England or “in” the US (that “in” still refers to traveling “to” the US, to clarify). The Germans also go “on” events like weddings or concerts, but “to” facilities like universities. You can’t make sense of these phrases by resorting to the literal meaning of the prepositions. German, Dutch, and English speakers are just using the words that everyone else has been using.

The Context of Words

It’s one thing to see dumb Reddit commentators complain about phrases they don’t like, but this sort of idea has spread elsewhere. Freddie deBoer wrote about the term “unhoused.”

Why is unhoused bad? Because, one, we have a word that already conveys everything that we need to understand about the described condition, and two, because “unhoused”’s stated value is that it destigmatizes a condition that we should want to stigmatize. Everyone knows what homelessness is. We all understand the implications of the word. It conveys a whole world of social and cultural and economic information that we have spent a lifetime processing.

In other words, we associate “homeless” with negative things because homelessness sucks. There’s nothing inherently nicer about a “-less” negation versus an “un-” negation. The former negates nouns while the latter negates other parts of speech. One can think of numerous insulting “un-” terms: unimportant, unsalvageable, unhinged, unstable, unkempt, and so on. The reason people feel better about “unhoused” is because they associate it with progressive, empathetic people. If Habitat for Humanity used the term “homeless” while Breitbart opted for “unhoused,” they’d see the words differently.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful with our words. Every language contains its own taboos and formalities. As a general rule in life, I support being nice to people. Since we’re all grown up enough to grasp the use-mention distinction, let’s consider the term “retarded.” I won’t use this term to refer to an individual with mental disabilities. My reasoning for doing so, however, doesn’t rely upon any literal or technical meanings. “Retard” stems from the French word for “slow,” and we still see this meaning in terms like “fire retardant.” There’s no universal force that makes “slow” more insulting than “disabled,” and certainly none that makes a Romance version of a word more insulting than a Germanic one. The word is rude because people use it as an insult. In another few decades, individuals might fling the phrase “differently-abled” at people they find stupid. At that point, “differently-abled” could become the rude one.

I also see this with the notion of “person-first language.” One might encourage others to say “person experiencing blindness” instead of “blind person.” This concept misunderstands how language works. Adjectives precede nouns in English. That’s a quirk of our grammar. It’s not something that alters our metaphysical view of anyone’s humanity. One can find plenty of languages where the adjective follows the noun and plenty of languages with case systems that allow for fluid word order. Speakers of these languages don’t hold more enlightened views about human worth. It’s also not hard to be a dick with person-first language. Consider this phrase: “that guy is useless.”

The idea that {earlier in sentence} = {more important} probably comes from the fact that English fronts the subject. We shouldn’t conclude much from this quirk either. Old English’s case system allowed authors to put the subject wherever they wanted to. Our sister languages require V2 word order, where the subject can occur on either side of the verb. Even in modern English, tone allows us to emphasize something other than the subject. Consider the semantic difference between these three sentences:

HE ate the cow
He ATE the cow
He ate THE COW

The Grain of Truth

I acknowledge some cases where words matter quite a lot, but I think speakers often misunderstand why. One common example is the phrase “No Fly Zone.” Americans have heard this phrase with regard to numerous conflicts over the past few decades. Critics decry this phrase as misleading, as some speakers may not realize that a “No Fly Zone” entails aerial warfare or at least the threat of it. The phrase can therefore lead the public underinformed or misinformed about the true nature of the policy.

Critics highlight the literal words (“no” + “fly” + “zone”), and note that none of them indicate bombers or ground-to-air missiles. That’s true, but that’s not why the phrase misleads people. It misleads people because it doesn’t represent the natural way that native speakers describe these situations. If everyone referred to military-backed aerial domination of an adversary as a “No Fly Zone,” the term wouldn’t confuse anyone. People don’t, however, so the term obfuscates the policy.

Consider the term “air force.” In another version of the universe, this term could mean something mundane, like “wind.” In our universe, everyone knows that an “air force” contains warships and bombs. That’s not because of the technical meaning of “air” and “force.” It’s because “air force” is the term that our language has settled on to describe this concept. The same hold of the word “tank.” Originally, the word was intended to obfuscate. In 1914, the average person would not have referred to an armed military vehicle as a “tank.” Today, everyone comprehends the word “tank” in a military context.

Conclusion

We should demand clear and compelling writing. The Enron scandal shows the danger of poor communication as the firm’s incomprehensible SEC filings hid the company’s crimes from regulators. Words may also hold rigid meanings in a technical context. Physicists need consistent definitions of words like “energy” and “force,” even as those terms gain additional meanings outside the lab. You also won’t read “could care less” or “couldn’t care less” on this blog. I will avoid these terms, not because of semantic technicalities, but because they’re boring. My preceding arguments don’t imply that we should accept stodgy writing. Rather, I’m noting that we can’t understand meaning, style, or connotation by cutting words and phrases into their irreducible components.

Think of how many metaphors are in this mundane sentence!