words

WORDS
 Guest writer JUDY PITT, JAMESTOWN, AUSTRALIA
 
 
 
If you play scrabble, then a good knowledge of words will stand you in good stead.  Some of the highest scoring words used in competition have been bezique, muzjiks, caziques and quixotry.  But what do they mean?  Unless you can understand or have a use for unusual words there isn’t a lot of benefit in knowing them, except of course, for use in Scrabble.
 
 Great writers can use words to create pictures that transport us to another time and place.  Think of Charles Dickens, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien … don’t their stories seem so real?  And when you see their books adapted for the screen, are the characters and places as you have imagined them?  Good authors craft their words to create a picture in our minds of the places they describe, so you can see, hear, smell and almost touch what they write about, and feel the emotions of the characters?  And what about newspaper journalists, … can they persuade you to their point of view, just using the written word?
 
One or two words in themselves can create pictures.   A current favourite of mine is argie bargie, and what does it conjure up in my mind - a mob of little Jack Russell Terriers chasing a lure, all wanting to be in front, all jockeying for position and all giving the other dogs ‘the eye’!  Originally the words were argle bargle, which meant to argue.  Nowadays argie bargie suggests a bit of push and shove.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious – remember when that word hit the airwaves in the film Mary Poppins!  And can you say it backwards?  And how about this word— pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis It is a real word and refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles specifically from a volcano, and is also the longest word in any English dictionaries. Words describe diseases, but can also cause dis-ease – ever had a bout of motor-mouth or foot-in-mouth syndrome!   I blush now as I think of the times I wish I had ‘zipped-the-lip’!  
LOSE TONGUE

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James 3 likens the tongue to an unbridled horse.  An unbridled horse can be controlled by the rider, but it requires a fully submissive horse, fully listening and fully obedient.  Does that describe your tongue, fully in control?   It doesn’t describe mine, especially when I am tired or in a situation I don’t want to be in.  My tongue certainly needs my full attention whenever it is in gear.
 
I’m glad that God’s Word has words like love, grace, forgiveness; words we can all understand and don’t need to look up in a dictionary or google on the web to find out what the heck they mean.  (What does google mean?)

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