⩩ 42
The world is too close for us to see it, and nothing is closer to us than language. These speech-joints, these language-bends, these words — we write them, we read them, we speak them all the time, with others and with ourselves. We use them constantly. But how often do we see them?
As an example, let’s take “however,” as in “She wanted to go. However, she decided against it.” Functionally, the word is a conjunction, connecting the two sentences and implying contrasting force. When we consider its anatomy and origin, we see that “however” is made up of two components, “how” and “ever.”
We can easily understand the functions of these components on their own, and reverse engineer their combination to form “however.” The sense behind the word seems to be “however that may be,” as in “I would love to come to your party. However that may be, I can’t.” After this bit of imaginative work, we can surmise that the word “however” not only can be understood through but actually originates in the larger phrase, “however that may be.” It is a fossil derived from that phrase and still today carries its larger meaning.
But as I said the world is close to us, too close for us to see, especially our words. We use them and don’t see them, notice them, consider them, as things in their own right. In the metaphor of coins, we spend them and don’t inspect them. It is disturbing, perplexing, disorienting when their substantial nature protrudes, when we see them with bodies and birthdays and histories of their own.
At this point, we might place “however” in a larger family. “Nonetheless” and “nevertheless” can be substituted for “however” in the sentences above. They too are made up of components we easily understand on their own, and whose originally independent functions appear to have fossilized into the single word we know today: “none the less” hardened into the word “nonetheless.”
When we realize one of these words, we are surprised, and yet what surprises us? That “nonetheless” is made up of “none the less,” or that it had escaped our attention so long? It seems to have been covered up by something, hidden from us, and yet it is obvious that it is in plain sight, on the very surface of the word. If only we look at it! What is surprising is that we are surprised.
How could the word’s origin and history, its makeup, so plainly there, ever have been hidden from us, and then for so long? What hides it? The answer is just use, habit, convention, convenience, fluency, which includes obliviousness. And so in this moment we catch the scent of an awesome, mysterious power at the bottom of all life: ignorance.
Even if you aren’t on the lookout for examples, you can hardly go far now without coming across more. “An-other,” or “some-one.” Here too are words compounded of elements that are still have meaning on their own. It’s easy to see that the words existed in uncompounded form first, that at some point, they came together and melded and eventually became one. “Some one” became “someone.”
We don’t, however, normally notice this, because we don’t study the word but use it, and use hides things. It hides the word’s birth, its original parts and their combining. Through use the creativity, the liveliness, the act of combination fades. The word grows flat, stiff, hard, uniform. A living thing becomes a fossil.
And yet, it is not the thing in itself that is fossilized but our way of relating to it, our fossilized way of using it. There are internally structured words, words made up of words, whose life, flexibility, and complexity we habitually overlook. How can we change this circumstance but by becoming aware of it? By reminding ourselves of it? And what better way of reminding ourselves of this than every once in a while doing a creative act ourselves?
For example, sticking with the category we’ve been examining, we could add “forallthat,” spontaneously and at will. Given “nonetheless” and “however,” why not? William James and James Joyce are the two canonical masters of this. To grab a contemporary author at random, Jessica Giggs writes that “animals embiggen our existence; they enliven our sense of mystery.” As I’ve said before, how could someone who didn’t still have this spontaneity and humility and youth be a choiceworthy friend?
To keep a sane and realistic approach to language, we must prescribe ourselves this. We must try our hand at the practice the craft of welding words. And if these made up words and thrown together combinations strike us as unusual and sound weird, if they stop us and make us look up, they’re doing their job.
You are reading Footnotes, by Garrett Allen, a series of philosophical-ish short essays. You just read ⩩ 42, the third installment in a chapter on language.