Pat Conroy on words.

    Because I was raised Roman Catholic, I never feared taking any unchaperoned walks through the fields of language. Words lifted me up and filled me with pleasure. I’ve never met a word I was afraid of, just ones that left me indifferent or that I knew I wouldn’t ever put to use. When reading a book, I’ll encounter words that please me, goad me into action, make me want to sing a song. I dislike pretentious words, those highfalutin ones with a trust fund and an Ivy League education. Often they were stillborn in the minds of academics, critics, scientists. They have a tendency to flash their warning lights in the middle of a good sentence. In literary criticism my eye has fallen on such gelatinous piles as “antonomasia,” “litotes,” or “enallage.” 

     I’ve no idea what those words mean nor how to pronounce them nor any desire to look them up. But whenever I read I’ll encounter forgotten words that come back to me like old friends who’ve returned from long voyages to bring me news of the world. Often, I’ll begin my writing day by reading those words in the notebooks I keep with such haphazard consistency. Though I’m an erratic journal keeper, I admire the art form well enough to wish I’d had the discipline to master that sideshow of the writer’s craft. I lose most of the world around me when I fail to record entries in those notebooks that line my shelves.

     I could build a castle from the words I steal from books I cherish. Here’s a list I culled from a book I read long ago—“sanction,” “outlaw,” “suburbia,” “lamentations,” “corolla,” “debris,” and “periodic table.” I can shake that fistful of words and jump-start a sentence that could send me on my way toward a new book. But if I go forward a single page I can listen to a different reading self who cherry-picked words from another book and recorded “atlas,” “villainy,” “candelabra,” “tango.” Each file of words seems outfitted for a different story or novel. I hunt down words that have my initials branded on their flanks. If I take the time to write one down I want to get it right every time I form a sentence. I’ve known dozens of writers who fear the pitfalls and fastnesses of the language they write in and the glossy mess of the humanity they describe. Yes, humanity is a mess and it takes the immensity of a coiled and supple language to do it justice. Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself. I’ve amassed a stockpile of books in vaults and storage bins in attics and unfinished basements and tortoiseshell-colored boxes that I raid with willful abandon when I try to fix a sentence on a page. Words call out my name when I need them to make something worthy out of language.

—from My Reading Life

Not exactly combobulated with prefixes

   The English language must be one of the most complex languages around (my Ukrainian friends may demur; they use different words, for the same thing, when speaking to a female rather than a male). One of the complexities of English must lie in its use of prefixes. Some are straightforward, like un-, ultra-, or sub-. Others often seem unnecessary, like be-: isn't becalm the same as calm, befog the same as fog, besiege the same as siege? There is even a word smirch; it means the same as besmirch.

    The most curious one to me is the prefix dis-. According to the rules, the prefix dis- denotes the negation, removal or expulsion of the verb to which it is attached. This can be clearly seen in such words as disappear, disclaim or discolor.

But occasionally the prefix attaches to a verb that, standing alone, would not have an opposite meaning. We have all heard of disgruntled postal workers, but what about the thousands of gruntled postal workers? If you distort something, you twist it, but a tort is a legal term for a wrongful act. If I discard something by accident, and then get it back, do I card it? No I retrieve it, which makes me wonder when I trieved it in the first place. Dissemination seems identical to semination to me. It is easy to disparage someone, but as far as I can tell impossible to parage someone. If I am saddened at something, I may be in dismay. When I am glad, I should say I am in may!

My goal here is not to suade you that English is a ciplined language, nor that we should dain it without question. I just want to make the point that proper usage is not always the aster we think it is. To think so would be showing real cernment.

—Wayne S.