The Life a Word Carries

A word is never only its dictionary meaning. In his column 'From the Silence Within', Santosh Nair reflects on how language gathers memory, emotion and experience, and how the labels we use can gradually shape the way we understand ourselves and others.

A word is like a person.

Imagine a stranger walking through a door. Before he says anything, we look at his face. We notice his clothes, his walk, his expression. Then somebody tells us, “He is a doctor.” Suddenly, the man becomes a little different in our eyes. We know what he does. Then he says he is from Pune. We ask, “Do you know so-and-so?” He says yes. “He is a good friend.” Someone else tells us that his brother is close to him. In a few minutes, without realising it, we have built a whole picture of the man. His profession, his city, his friends, his family, his connections, his way of speaking. We have placed him somewhere in our mind.

We do the same thing with words.

Read more: How Many Times Must We Prove Where We Belong?

A word is more than its dictionary meaning

A word first enters our ear through its sound. That is its face. Then we find its dictionary meaning. That is its profession. But does a person become only his profession? Of course not. And a word does not become only its dictionary meaning either.........

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