LEND ME YOUR EAR: MEANING OF MEANING TOO MEANINGFUL FOR WORDS

No matter how often we search the Scriptures, we are sure to discover something new. Recently, while giving the Bible yet another read, I happened on the word "outwent." I couldn't believe this unlikely find had eluded me all these years, but there it was, in Mark 6:33 the people following John the Baptist "ran afoot thither out of all cities, and outwent them, and came together unto him."

According to Webster's Ninth New, "outgo" was first recorded as a verb in 1630. It follows that the past tense is "outwent." Lately, a commentator used the past tense in a report on the trouble between Israel and the PLO; meaning that "outwent" has endured through the ages without help from this aging mortal.

The antithesis of "outgo" is "input", but if "input" is in the Bible perhaps I'll find it next time I try reading it through. I have just heard a company official boast that his firm is "inputting into much more as they started out with." Well, I'm putting much more into these columns than I started out with, but my grammar and idiom are better than the successful businessman's. This should console me to a greater extent than it does.

Seldom-used words keep popping up in the most unlikely places. In a New Yorker story some time ago, "whilom" was used for formerly. "Whilom" is acceptable as an adjective (the whilom Miss Caxton), but archaic if used as an adverb. The word has an archaic ring to my ears regardless of use, and seems wholly out of place in The New Yorker. But perhaps the author is a centenarian, or British.

Regular readers of The Farmer's Almanac are familiar with the word "Unitology", but my dictionaries have ignored it, and it does not refer to unitarianism as I thought at first glance. UNITOLOGY FORECAST is an annual publication farmers use as their second bible. To me, the idea smacks of astrology, but I dare not consider Unitology and astrology interchangeable lest I offend my Gordonville cousins. Besides, I haven't read the book.

A reader has questioned my connecting "glossalalic" with speaking in tongues, discussed in a recent column. American Heritage defines glossalalic as "the gift of tongues," and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language lists repetitive language under the heading SPEAKING IN TONGUES. Holy, Holy, Holy, and Silent Night, Holy Night fall within this category.

"Glossaholic", a simple coinage, also came under fire because there is no alcohol in the study of words. "Drunk on words" is a playful way of saying I'm addicted to words. A little wine is good for the health, says the Good Book, and "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine."

To illustrate how many meanings one word can have, two language specialists, C.A. Ogden and I.A. Richards, wrote a book some years ago entitled "The Meaning of MEANING". The authors listed 16 meanings for meaning, among which were the following: John means to write intends; A green light means GO indicates; His look is full of meaning special import; What is the meaning of life? point, purpose.

How many synonyms do dictionaries give for each example? English is the only language that has so many words applicable to similar circumstances. But no one knows how words came about in any language. For that matter, no one knows how to define the word "word." A word may be the name of something, or a label, or only a concept and concepts take many shapes in the mind.

In the early 19th century, a noted language expert wrote: "The meaning of a word is its use in the language." Granted. But what is the meaning of "like" and "you know" in sentences such as: "I have like two daughters, you know," spoken on a talk show? "It's like, maybe, I don't need to get high, you know," conceded on a talk show by a college girl recovering from drug abuse? "The neck of his T-shirt is like, you know, two inches too big," offered by a Loud Mouth holding forth on a political candidate of the opposite party?

"Like" and "you know" may serve as pauses for thinking, but they have no meaning as words. Come to think of it, what do speakers and writers mean by "meaningful" an overworked adjective substituting for any one of the 16 meanings of meaning tendered by Ogden and Richards?

Leading experts of language banned "meaningful" as meaningless some time back. But the term still permeates the spoken and written word, while failing on solid ground.