lexicon
Make friends with words
Deepti

Cross-pollination is very common in the growth of words, here’s an interesting example. An old scientific experiment used a frog to prove how slow change often does not register with the sense organs of organisms.

A frog when placed in hot water jumps out immediately but if the same frog is placed in cold water that begins to boil very slowly, it cannot detect the threat in time and dies. When companies do not have emergency plans in place or do not react to change, they are said to suffer from the ‘boiling frog syndrome’.

Every person has two kinds of vocabulary: active and passive. Our active vocabulary includes all those words that we can use freely as we are sure of their meaning and know all the forms in which they can be used. Our passive vocabulary is made up of words that we know but not so thoroughly as to use freely.

The best way to build a vocabulary of active words is to look up 10 words daily. Even if you don’t come across 10 new ones in your everyday dealing, just pick out random words in the dictionary and make them your friends.

When social relationships begin to change, words gain the most through new coinage. Whereas earlier a date was a romantic meeting between a boy and a girl, girls going out together are being termed hen date and men going out with men are said to be on a man date. Moreover, given the complicated scenario of man-woman relationships in a complex world, more and more men are happy with male bonding and enjoy ‘bromance’ rather than ‘romance’. Of course, ‘bromance’ is a blend of ‘brother’ and ‘romance’ and is so far found only in blogs and tweets.

Three easily confused words need some clarification. The first, ‘palate’ refers to the top part of the inside of the mouth. It is also used metaphorically as in ‘I have a spicy palate’. The second, ‘palette’ is the artist’s board for mixing colors and the third ‘pallet’ refers to a platform used to lift and carry goods.