Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 03/09/18> Why do we use the term “ship” so much in the English language?

I never was one who got great grades in school, I didn’t just get through it with barley passing grades, but I was no honor student either. Also, it has been well over forty years since I was in school and I have forgotten a few things I learned while I was there as well. Recently, I got to thinking about words and meanings and just how words are constructed and it occurred to me that we seem to like words ending in “ship”.

The other thing I got to thinking about was just how many words are in the English language. “Well , don’t just sit there old man; go find out.” said the voice inside my head.

So, I did just that, and I employed the Google voice command on my phone to give me the number of words in the English language. Let me tell you, the book I grew up with that we called a “dictionary” must have been a well abbreviated version of the English language words because it was just one book. Either that; or we have added a bunch of words to the English language since I was in school and was making good use of the Merriam Webster Dictionary we had in the house when I was growing up.

The Oxford English Dictionary , which I will refer to as OED going forward, has not one volume but twenty volumes. In those twenty volumes are listed 171,146 words that are currently being used. I know this because I counted every damn one of them, well maybe I didn’t, but evidently someone did because that is what the lady on my phone told me when I asked the question. The OED also says that there are 47,156 words that are obsolete and not in use any longer. To tell you how ignorant I am when it comes to the language that I speak as my “first” language there are more obsolete words in it than I imagined being in the entire language.

Let’s be honest here, you had no idea either on how many words are in use in the English language, so I at least know I am not alone in my ignorance. Before you get all in a huff over me calling us ignorant just let it go; there is nothing wrong with being ignorant. We can’t know everything, and that is all ignorance is; it just means we are lacking knowledge or awareness of a certain subject.

So, the OED says that we are currently adding about 4,000 words a year to the English language. Early in my short time here on steemit I entered a writing contest that had as part of the requirement was to create a cuss word that would be used in the year 2029 and I came up with the word “guzbuck”. I can’t wait to see how long before guzbuck makes it into the OED, if you do a Google search for guzbuck the number 1 item that pops up on Google is that piece I wrote, my Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 11/29/2029.

My first guess on how we can be adding 4,000 words a year would have to be that these words are being created from all the new technologies that are being created. That would make perfect sense; it would also make perfect sense on how words are becoming obsolete as well. The thing about obsolete words is we can’t just get rid of them and wipe them out completely, at some point someone is going to want to go back and look up an obsolete word in the future. My second guess on word creation has to do with slang and culture. We have a tendency with social media to combine words for brevity, like televangelist for television evangelist. Is it really that hard to say or type “television evangelist” that we had to create a new word?

I did check and both my guesses were corrected so at least in my ignorance of the size of the language I do have some understanding on how and why it is growing. One thing I will say is, I damn sure would not want to be entered into a spelling contest in this day and age when the judges have over 170,000 words to choose from.

The words that are no longer in use intrigue me too, this daily dose column more than likely will not gorgonize you, and I need to excogigate more so that each and every daily dose will gorgonize you in the future. I may even start a movement to bring back obsolete words, I like the word gorgonize over mesmerize, and it has more of a manly sound to it. While I do think and plan these daily doses out during my day, it may seem like sometimes I have just not excogigated enough, which is thinking and planning.

It’s really a good thing that I don’t fuzzle any longer, which means to get intoxicated or drunk, I was a grumpish fuzzle in my younger years. Well, I have guzbucked around enough for today’s daily dose, and by the way, over 230 words end in “ship”, which is more than I expected.

Until next time,
@sultnpapper

https://sola.ai/sultnpapper