JOY ALONG THE WAY: THE EBB AND FLOW OF WORDS

Somewhere, sometime, someone speaks a word at the exact moment to impress one or more listeners or readers, and, like a contagious organism, that word spreads very quickly until everyone seems to have a "go" at it sooner than later.

A few years ago such a word was "resonate." Will the message resonate in the South?" it was asked. "Will this plan of action resonate amongst the Teamsters? Will the conservationists' recommendations resonate among landowners?"

It was a way of asking, "Will what one has to say be heard, by way of repetition or chain letter effect, farther than the usual sound of the speaker's voice?"

I suppose the word, resonate, is a first cousin, or maybe twin of the expression, "Will it play In Peoria?"

Did Peoria earn its implied testing place by resonation? Someone had to say it first. Did it seem so alliteratively pleasing or pragmatically fitting, it got caught up in a network of eardrums and resonated nationally? I wonder if all those who use the expression know where Peoria is.

We're slacking off on the word "resonate" now. It got overworked. We're going back to basics (another overworked but fundamental sounding expression), and folks are merely saying, "Yes, I hear you, but will what you say go any further?"

The popular word now is "closure." There are so many things folks want to put to a closure so they can get on without nagging, unfinished business trailing along. It is just a fancy word for "end."

Somehow, closure is usually identified with unhappy events. If someone has long been missing and finally found to be dead, that puts a closure on it. Or does it really? If a trial goes on for years and an uncontested verdict comes in that puts a closure on it. Does "closure" or "end" sound more effective? I'm sure renowned speakers study these nuances. To me, "closure" evokes the sound of a door being softly closed. "End" elicits a slamming emotion.

If Mama, tired of hearing her children endlessly quarreling, had said, "Now I want you to put a closure on this," she may have enhanced our vocabulary, but when she said, "End this right now," we did.

I wonder if anyone is keeping tabs on when certain words come into high use? If so, I think such words could be used as chapter titles for a history book: Talkers, Listeners, Resonations, Tribulations, Closures, etc.

Under the chapter, Resonations, could be a re-treatment of messages that sounded throughout the land and still going such as, "Give me liberty or give me death," "I have a dream," "Nuts," "Remember the Alamo," etc. Under Closures could be: The Federal Deficit, MIA's, Racism, O.J. Simpson Trial, if they ever qualify.

Well, plain or fancy reporting, Schipppers has come with his weed-eater to put a closure on my dying phlox, rudbeckia, tiger lily and weed stalks for this season. The sound of his weed-eater resonates for two hundred feet maybe and then becomes just a silent disturbance of the airwaves. In other words, it is a simple end to the flower border for this year. I'll miss the color, still there is something comforting about it. Where there is a closure there is reason for a new beginning, a phrase that resonates in every cell of my brain.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and a longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.