When and Why Did You Start Getting Into Words?

Wordsmith.org

I would say I started getting into words at around 15. It most fittingly happened when I wanted to study for the SAT. I think it was specifically when I got one of those generic SAT vocabulary word worksheets. It talked about root words and prefixes, and told us that we should read the newspaper and such. And then I got this insatiable desire to learn new words. I found that there was a huge, diverse cornucopia of words that mean all things from all places, words that are quirky, mellifluous, long, short, technical, simple, foreign, new, and old. I started looking through the dictionary, signing up for newsletters, and googling things like the longes words or "fun words," etc. I believe that learning new words actually opens your mind to seeing things in a different way. And it can actually be a gateway to other languages.
Also, maybe in a more paranoid way, I see it as an "insurance." If anyone has read "1984," you would see that with the language of "newspeak" the range of thinking of the general populace was severly limited. Everything that was bad was "thoughtcrime" and everything that was good related to "Big brother." We might have a similar situation, where new "buzzwords" for social issues are being created all the time and corporations and politicians try to tell us how we should think through "perception management" and public relations.

Actually, I think a weird thing is that, even though I think of myself as a logophile, I don't like reading, I'm alliterate. One would think those two things would go hand-in-hand, but apparently not. (I should start reading more though).
Okay, I'm going off in a tangent again.
Now's your turn.

When and Why Did You Start Getting Into Words?

Hmm, interesting question. I would have to say I started getting into words when I was about 3. The reason I say this is that I was in kindergarten at that age and I distinctly remember words at that age. I know that by the time I was seven years of age I was bored enough that I sat down and read the entire volume sets of the encyclopedia britannica, the new world encyclopedia, the webster's and harvard dictionary's, along with the old English Lexicons. I was bored, what can I say.

After that it became a challenge to me to read words, but I understood them. I had dyslexia and found out I had a bad case of it. Once I was diagnosed it became a challenge to me to study words and understand them again, so I fell in love even more. And due to all of this, here I am today. Loving words.

Quote:

I'm alliterate.

alliterate

VERB: Inflected forms: al�lit�er�at�ed, al�lit�er�at�ing, al�lit�er�ates
INTRANSITIVE VERB: 1. To use alliteration in speech or writing. 2. To have or contain alliteration.
TRANSITIVE VERB: To form or arrange with alliteration.
ETYMOLOGY: Back-formation from alliteration.

--AHD4

Give us an example, mecha!

Oops.
*aliterate

(Serves me right for using the internet when I'm half-asleep.)

Thank you for asking. But I suggest, however, that contributors are often bored by lengthy followups to a thread of this sort. Anyone really, honestly wishing to know: I am dalehileman@verizon.net and I will happily chat with you all day

>contributors are often bored by lengthy followups to a thread of this sort.

or, perhaps, the subject has come up here before. (there's a challenge for those who like to use the search function!)

Yes, I know...
It's inevitable that it came up before.
But then comes the catch-22.
I commit a forum faux pas by repeating a topic that has been talked about before, and if I resurrect said old topic I commit another forum faux pas. Either way I'll get chastised.
So I just decided to take my chances... (I was bored.)

very rarely has anyone here objected to revivication of an old thread -- on the contrary, that's been done at the drop of a fedora!

(at the drop of a hat)
...and some, me for example, will have forgotten all about the old thread, so it's all new and interesting.

We used to have an acronym, YART, for Yet Another Retread Topic. We chewed it up and spit it out eventually. We learned that there is always something new to say about almost anything, particularly with new blood constantly coming in to the board.

If you want to be roundly spanked for bringing up old tired issues go to wordorigins and tell them you have the definitive answer to the origins of the phrase "the whole nine yards." But don't tell them Faldage sent ya.

I love words and I also love reading.

I began at an early age by thumbing through dictionaries, magazines, and encyclopedias. Unfortunately, I have a really horrible memory, so very little stuck. Later, as my reading habits widened, my functional vocabulary expanded immensely. In particular, I note that a lot of those SAT/GRE words are found in classical literature, if in few other places.

Words are a minor interest. I'm a lot more interested in meaning and how it occurs.

Let's see. Hard to say. My grandmother spoke an Italian dialect at home with her sons, but a weird kind of Italian inter-dialectal lingua franca with other Italians in her home town who all came from different dialect areas of Italy. During high school, I spent a lot of time in the library, which had a beautiful old OED bound into volumes from fascicles. Reading the etymologies therein made me wonder about all the other languages that English was related to. The first book I ordered from a publisher was Braune's Gotische Grammatik. They didn't carry it in any local book stores. (Actually at the time there was only one in our town, the owner of which was kind enough to show me Books in Print and how to order books using it.) Before graduation from high school, I also started to use the libraries at some local colleges to read linguistics books. Pei, Whatmough, Bloomfield, Sapir, Jespersen, Brugmann, et al. What started out with words soon morphed into a genuine interest in how languages differed from one another or historically from different versions of themselves. By the time I got to university, I majored in linguistcs.

Please don't misread the comment about the subject having been brought up before Mechan. If a topic has been discussed before, the person who posted the topic might not get a lot of responses, and feel hurt. Letting them know it has been discussed explains this lack of response.

This doesn�t mean you shouldn�t continue the discussion. Faldage's sentiment is right, there always seems to be new angles, and new voices to add to the pot.

I am the worst at finding old threads, but sometimes, folks find the old threads and add a link to that thread in their post. That is easier to deal with than bringing the old thread back up. Some of the old threads were very long and some folks� internet access is very slow, so a long thread takes forever to load and then all they get for their wait is a couple of new comments added to the pile. A new thread with a link to the old thread is much easier to load.

You don�t have to post the link though. Like I said, I�m the worst at finding old topics so there�s no way I�d expect anybody else to.

So, no worries Mechan. post away with any topic you like.

Aww thanks.

I like words, just not long ones (I'm hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobic).

Hehe.