Greatest word in history

I love the word «y’all».  That might sound like an overstatement and perhaps it is.  I mean I’m not a total psycho about it, but come on.  Let’s admit it.  It’s awesome.  I guess it’s my Texas upbringing that gives me such fondness for the word.  It is certainly the best way to indicate that one is speaking to a group of people.  

I’ve already got Ross using it and I’m not stopping there!  I want to turn y’all into a global phenomenon.

I’ve heard some southern transplants lament the fact that this gem has crept into their vocabularies.  Why!?  It’s a lovely little word.  It get’s the point across and it rolls right off the tongue.  Tell me what better word or phrase there is to take it’s place?  The midwestern «youse guys»?  I think not.  «Everyone»?  Where’s the charm in that?

Now this brings me to one final point about my beloved word.  It is y’all.  Y-apostrophe-A-L-L. It is NOT, under any circumstances «ya’ll».  It seriously brings out a case of my crazies when I see it spelled this way.  Just think about it.   It is a contraction of the words «you» and «all».  The apostrophe takes the place of the «O» and «U».  It is pronounced exactly like it looks with the «y» flowing gently into the «all».  If it were «ya’ll» it would be a contraction of what exactly?  «Ya» and «all»?  «Ya» isn’t even a word.  And it would be pronounced with an awful and halting «ya» sound followed by a guttural «lllll».  Sick and wrong I say!  Sick and wrong!

So, dear readers, please strive to incorporate the word «y’all» into your daily vocabulary.  But only if you spell it correctly

What is your favourite regional word?

My fav in Northern England so far is the use of «Ta» for «Thank you».  It sounds so friendly and sweet.

*Perhaps the slightest bit of an exaggeration.  But y’all don’t blame me, right?

There have been quite a few famous speeches in the course of human history. Winston Churchill and William Wilberforce both addressed the British House of Commons in their respective eras with words that have been dramatized by Hollywood. Abraham Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg are studied by elementary students year after year. Socrates had his Apology and Paul his sermon at Mars Hill. Yet, none of these are the greatest words in human history. To understand the greatest words ever spoken, we’re going way back—back to the beginning. We’re going back to the first words mankind ever heard.

A Journey to Eden

In 1972 the Steve Miller Band released a song entitled Journey from Eden. The chorus captures something every human being knows—there’s something wrong with this world.

Listen to the blackbird sadly sing
For you, for me
Look at all the pointless suffering
Humanity

But let’s take a journey to Eden for a moment, before mankind had to listen to the blackbird sadly sing. Before the suffering. God planted a perfect garden in Eden and placed man there to work it and keep it (Genesis 2:8,15). In this paradise, God provided the first man, Adam, with an abundance of good gifts and one of those gifts we must not overlook were His words.

¹⁶ And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)

No doubt there is much to consider in this first command given to Adam, but I want to consider the big picture in this post. I want to consider God’s words. The fact that God is a speaking God.

Characteristics of God’s Words

There are a few truths worthy of our contemplation as we consider these words of God. These first words were spoken to humanity from a God who delights to reveal Himself and in this revelation we learn some things about all of God’s words, that is Scripture. But before we get to that, let’s hone in on Genesis 2:16-17. First of all, these words were:

Good

God’s words to Adam were good words. God’s command to Adam wasn’t a temptation. God tempts no one (James 1:13). Rather, these words were for Adam’s good as they revealed God’s will. God could perhaps have communicated differently in some sort of escape room puzzle that Adam had to figure out. But God didn’t do this. God spoke. God revealed Himself to Adam in a special way through speech. How good are God’s words! Secondly, these words were:

Necessary

Adam could learn much about God from the world around him. He could see God’s power and goodness in creation, for example. But what Adam could not know from the revelation of creation was God’s will. Even before the Fall Adam needed God’s words. These words weren’t just good for Adam but absolutely necessary for his true understanding of God and to follow God in faith and obedience. Thirdly, these words of God were:

Authoritative

Yahweh Elohim commanded the man. The Creator exercised His sovereign right over the creature. The only way Adam could believe and obey God was to believe and obey His words. These words carried the full authority of the Creator God who spoke them. Fourthly, these words were:

Clear

There was no Bible code in God’s speech. Adam didn’t have to wonder what it was God really wanted from him. These were clear words. God spoke to Adam in a language he could understand in a way he could understand it. God was not hiding His holy will from man, but revealing it in clarity so that there would be no doubt of His desire. Fifthly, these words were:

Sufficient

Adam didn’t need more words from God in order to trust and obey what God had given Him. Yahweh’s words were enough. God was not expecting more from Adam than what He revealed to him. God’s words were sufficient for all that Adam’s soul required. To commune with God, Adam simply needed to hear the words spoken to him, and to trust them, and obey them.

The God Who Speaks

There have been many great speeches given in human history. But no speech compares to God’s speech. And I’m not simply talking about these words spoken in the Garden in Eden. You see, these words of God spoken to Adam are a microcosm of every single word that God has spoken. The characteristics of the words spoken to Adam in the Garden are the same characteristics of all 66 books of canonical Scripture, for Scripture is the very voice of God in written form.

Scripture is a revelation of God’s goodness to us. God speaks! What a wonder that the God of heaven stoops to give us His words. And these words are necessary for us! Mankind simply can’t know God in a saving way through Christ without these words.

These words, the 66 books of Scripture, are authoritative. To disbelieve or disobey them is to disbelieve or disobey God Himself. And these words are clear. While it’s true there are some complicated portions of Scripture, the message as a whole of God’s goodness, man’s fallenness, and God’s redemption in Christ is quite clear.

Finally, the Bible is sufficient. We don’t need God to speak audibly to us because we have a sufficient word from Him in the Scriptures. The Scriptures contain everything we need to know to trust and obey God. There are no additional things God requires of His people that He has not already given to us in His precious word.

The Divine Orator

The greatest speech in human history begins in Genesis 1:1 and ends in Revelation 22:21. The Scriptures are the greatest words in human history because they are God’s words to men and women, boys and girls. These words reveal the truth of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection for our sins. These words show us God and His ways. By these words will all men’s actions be weighed. By these words will some find life and many be condemned without excuse.

Dear reader! Will you take up and read these words for the good of your soul? How needy we are of them but oh how willing our God is to give them to us. May your life be spent trusting and obeying the greatest words in human history for your good and God’s glory.

I have long been interested in words but most specifically in the question of how a coinage makes it into the larger language, especially at a time when the English language seems to have more than enough words to sustain itself. It is one thing to create a new word or catchphrase and quite another for one of your lexical offspring to find acceptance. As John Moore wrote in his book, You English Words: “The odds against a new word surviving must be longer than those against a great oak tree growing from any given acorn.”

I began collecting Authorisms – words, phrases or names created by a writer – more than a decade ago using a number of resources to determine the actual author of a given instance. Most of my word sleuthing took place in the Library of Congress where I consulted many printed and electronic sources. William Shakespeare whose written vocabulary consisted of 17, 245 words included hundreds of authorisms. Some of them, true nonce words, never went further than their appearance in his plays, but others – like bump, hurry, critical, and road — are essential parts of our standard vocabulary today. With many other examples to choose from here are my 10 favourites.

1. Banana Republic

A politically unstable, undemocratic and tropical nation whose economy is largely dependent on the export of a single limited-resource product, such as a fruit or a mineral. The pejorative term was coined by O Henry (William Sidney Porter) in his 1904 collection of short stories entitled Cabbages and Kings.

2. Beatnik

This one was created by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen in his column of April 2, 1958 about a party for “50 beatniks.” Caen was later quoted, “I coined the word ‘beatnik’ simply because Russia’s Sputnik satellite was aloft at the time and the word popped out.”

3. Bedazzled

To be irresistibly enchanted, dazed or pleased A word that Shakespeare debuts in The Taming of the Shrew when Katharina says: “Pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes, that have been so bedazzled with the sun that everything I look on seemeth green.” Several of the websites that track the Bard’s words have, in recent years, commented on the fact that a commercial product called The Be Dazzler had come on the market and was taking some of the shine from the word. The Be Dazzler is a plastic device used to attach rhinestones to blue jeans, baseball caps and other garments. One site commented: “A word first used to describe the particular gleam of sunlight is now used to sell rhinestone-embellished jeans. “

4. Catch-22

The working title for Joseph Heller’s modern classic about the mindlessness of war was Catch-18, a reference to a military regulation that keeps the pilots in the story flying one suicidal mission after another. The only way to be excused from flying such missions is to be declared insane, but asking to be excused for the reason of insanity is proof of a rational mind and bars being excused. Shortly before the appearance of the book in 1961, Leon Uris’s bestselling novel Mila 18 was published. To avoid numerical confusion, Heller and his editor decided to change 18 to 22. The choice turned out to be both fortunate and fortuitous as the 22 more rhythmically and symbolically captures the double duplicity of both the military regulation itself and the bizarre world that Heller shapes in the novel. (“’That’s some catch, that Catch-22’,” observes Yossarian. ‘It’s the best there is,’ Doc Daneeka agrees.’”) During the decades since its literary birth, catch-22, generally lower-cased, has come to mean any predicament in which we are caught coming and going, and in which the very nature of the problem denies and defies its solution.

5. Cyberspace

Novelist William Gibson invented this word in a 1982 short story, but it became popular after the publication of his sci-fi novel Neuromancer in 1984. He described cyberspace as “a graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system.

6. Freelance

i) One who sells services to employers without a long-term commitment to any of them.
ii) An uncommitted independent, as in politics or social life .
The word is not recorded before Sir Walter Scott introduced it in Ivanhoe which, among other things, is often considered the first historical novel in the modern sense. Scott’s freelancers were mercenaries who pledged their loyalty and arms for a fee. This was its first appearance: “I offered Richard the service of my Free Lances, and he refused them – I will lead them to Hull, seize on shipping, and embark for Flanders; thanks to the bustling times, a man of action will always find employment.”

7. Hard-Boiled

Hardened, hard-headed, uncompromising. A term documented as being first used by Mark Twain in 1886 as an adjective meaning “hardened”. In a speech he alluded to hard-boiled, hide-bound grammar. Apparently, Twain and others saw the boiling of an egg to harden the white and yolk as a metaphor for other kinds of hardening.

8. Malapropism

An incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, often humorous utterance. This eponym originated from the character Mrs Malaprop, in the 1775 play The Rivals by Irish playwright and poet Richard Brinsley Sheridan. As you might expect, Mrs Malaprop is full of amusing mistakes, exclaiming “He’s the very pineapple of success!” and “She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile!” The adjective Malaproprian is first used, according to the OED, by George Eliot. “Mr. Lewes is sending what a Malapropian friend once called a ‘missile’ to Sara.”

9. Serendipity

The writer and politician Horace Walpole invented the word in 1754 as an allusion to Serendip, an old name for Sri Lanka. Walpole was a prolific letter writer, and he explained to one of his main correspondents that he had based the word on the title of a fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. The three princes were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not looking for.

10. Whodunit

A traditional murder mystery. Book critic Donald Gordon created the term in the July 1930 American News of Books when he said of a new mystery novel: “Half-Mast Murder, by Milward Kennedy – A satisfactory whodunit.” The term became so popular that by 1939, according to the Merriam-Webster website, “at least one language pundit had declared it ‘already heavily overworked’ and predicted it would ‘soon be dumped into the taboo bin.’ History has proven that prophecy false, and whodunit is still going strong.”