WHY WORDS ARE FAKE

January 8, 2025 - Published

I had a conversation with a friend a bit ago about a discovery I had about bugs and insects. Apparently, "bugs" are the specific term while "insects" are the more general term. Both of us were shocked! I had known insects as "the bugs with 6 legs," and my friend seemed to feel similarly.

So, my question to ask is this: if our definition of "bug" was technically incorrect... what were we saying to each other whenever we said "bug"?

It is a word, a collection of vowels and consonants that can be spoken or written. It has a meaning that we both shared an understanding of. It has facilitated communication between us and the people we know with no issues whatsoever.

However, if you look in the dictionary for this definition of "bug," it's labelled as either "informal" or "colloquial." I imagine that in older dictionaries, this may have not even appeared as an alternative definition, but eventually it must have come about due to a shared misunderstanding of what "bug" means -- the actual meaning now has the alternative term "true bugs"!

So, when do we reach a point where it's no longer colloquial, and just becomes the new definition? Is this meaning still "incorrect"? The answer is no -- the point of a word is to have an agreed-upon definition in order to facilitate communication. Insisting that something is "wrong" even if everyone has agreed to use it a certain way would hinder communication.

But these things happen much more often than you might think! People will often say "all words are just made up," and it continues to be more true the more you look into it. Any linguist you ask will describe themselves as descriptivists, not prescriptivists, but due to various reasons (most of them are agreed to be classism) many non-linguists will insist on making people write and speak in a specific way as "correct" even if those are also just made up.

...but we all already know this. We know words are made up, and that certain slang words just didn't exist before one day, they did. Is there anything else I mean by words being made up?

Well, I had another interesting conversation with a different friend, about respect and honor. They said, "If I had kids, I would never teach respect, in favor of honor" and had an entire argument about how respect was authoritative while honor was about kindness. To put it simply, this was a concept I strongly disagreed with.

However, if we look at a dictionary like good ol Merriam-Webster, this doesn't clear up the distinction like the other issue with bugs. Respect is "high or special regard." Honor is a "symbol of distinction." Neither of these sound like kindness, or treating others equally, yet we both interpreted one as very different than the other.

To my friend, respect was about making others bow down to you, while honor was about bowing down to treat others with high regards. To me, honor was about holding up a special badge over others, while respect was basic etiquette, like respecting others' personal space or knocking someone's door before entering. Are either of us wrong?

Not really.

Words are made up because we all assume that our words mean the same thing when it might not mean the same thing to others. We speak these words every day with the assumptions that they will be received correctly, but it's really just throwing sounds into the world and hoping that the world responds back with the general idea of what you said. When thought of like that, it's a wonder communication functions at all.

When I say the word "respect," what do you think of? Is it the same idea as mine? What about "honor"? The color "green"? The concept of "wisdom"? "Freedom"? "Honesty"? "Happiness"?

All these things that we have to put into the boxes of words, but become the foundation of our values, our lives, and our language. But really, it's all basically made up. It's something I'll be thinking about the next time I have a misunderstanding with someone.