Who is Harm?
A friend
of mine told his young son that they needed to move something “out of harm’s
way.” With the wonderful curiosity of childhood, the boy asked: “Who is Harm?”
He quite understandably defined harm as a person.
We’d say
the word means something like “physical injury, hurt, damage,” to use Wiktionary’s
definition.
Some words
are more difficult to define, especially abstract concepts. Try telling your
4-year-old what love or art or poetry means.
If you
asked me to define torque, I’d steer you to a dictionary. Or how about
the word itch?
Also
difficult to define are the definite and indefinite articles: the, an
and a.
Same with
fillers we use in speech, like um, like and you know. These
words provide what linguists call structural cues.
Think for
example of people you know who pepper their speech with like. That
brings us to a related issue: the difference between a word’s definition (its
“semantic meaning,” to be technical), versus its function in a sentence. We
know that like means having similar qualities. (“He’s behaving like a
thug.”) But how about its use in these sentences: “So I’m like, ‘No way’” and
“It was like ten miles.” A website
offering writing tips for students says that like in contexts like these
“Cushions an assertion, introduces direct speech or thoughts, or marks an
approximation.” But defining like in these contexts isn’t easy.
In each
case, a good communicator omits like and rewords the sentence if
necessary.
Other
tricky words to define are prepositions. Native English speakers can easily
tell how to use to, on and by, but not when they should or
why. Much of English depends on idiomatic usage. There’s no special reason for saying
“Dinner’s on the table,” not “Dinner’s by the table.”
Dinner’s ready?
Time for eat.
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