The weird and wonderful life of words
Words, eh? To say that any piece of writing is just words put together is like saying that a human being is just skin and bone and various kinds of biological tissue. Something is missing. You can call it personality, or soul, or character, but the total is definitely more than the sum of the parts. For one thing, words have a 'sound-shape' which can add spice to a sentence. Alliteration - of which I am excessively fond - is one case in point. Then there is meaning, which is that most mysteriously malleable of marvels (see above on alliteration). A class of words called 'phonosthemes' combines the two: slush, slip, slide, sluice all suggest something fluid (whether movement or substance or object).
This is going to be a trawl across meaning, and the way that we might bend meanings in different directions, sometimes quite unexpectedly. It starts really with the verb 'to fly'. When I was writing Thalassa: the world beneath the waves, which is set underwater, I needed a verb for the action of piloting a submarine. To pilot sounded too technical and not exciting enough. To drive - nope, you need wheels (or legs, as in oxen) for that; I needed something more nautical. So I tried 'swim' (no, submarines have propellers, not legs or fins). Then 'sail' (no, you need wind for that). I was a bit stuck. And then I thought of 'fly'.
Now, 'flying' normally requires wings and involves the air, although penguins effectively 'fly' with their wings underwater - amazingly well, in fact; so different from the Chaplin-eseque hop n' waddle they adopt on land. My submarines had steering fins, and of course like aeroplanes, they have propellers (impellers, technically). Flying also suggests ease and speed, and living underwater, it wouldn't be used for anything else. So I felt justified in having my Tethyans in their future undersea Colonies using the word 'to fly' for the act of piloting a submarine; a thousand years hence, there are no aeroplanes, and the meaning could easily shift.
But could it? Well, here are some examples of everyday words that don't quite mean what they used to:
to dial a number - most telephones have buttons (real or virtual), not an actual dial.
to turn on - valid for old-fashioned gaslights with their valves (or a dimmer), but not valid for anything that we turn on by pressing a button.
screen - an interesting one. A screen used to - and still sometimes does - mean something to obscure the view. As far as I'm aware, screen with the idea of a display evolved from firescreens or bathscreens, both of which quickly became ornamented or decorated so that they stopped being a simple barrier, and became objects of visual curiosity in their own right.
quad-bike - OK, bit tenuous this one, since this is hardly an everyday word, but quad of course means four, and bike (from bicycle) means two wheels... Now, bike clearly means something you ride.
burger famously from Hamburger, meaning 'something or someone from Hamburg', not a patty (whether made of ham, or anything else).
to rewind - valid for anything that is actually wound, like magnetic-tape for video or audio, not for digital media.
similarly, to scroll - swiping with your finger across a touchscreen is not unravelling a roll of parchment.
And finally, my own favourite, which is not a word but an icon - that small floppy-disc that you click on to save something, in an era when floppies have all but vanished.
So, pedants everywhere, beware. Words are not things that can easily be penned in and held immobile in some semantic straitjacket. They change. Sometimes in the most amazing ways.
This is going to be a trawl across meaning, and the way that we might bend meanings in different directions, sometimes quite unexpectedly. It starts really with the verb 'to fly'. When I was writing Thalassa: the world beneath the waves, which is set underwater, I needed a verb for the action of piloting a submarine. To pilot sounded too technical and not exciting enough. To drive - nope, you need wheels (or legs, as in oxen) for that; I needed something more nautical. So I tried 'swim' (no, submarines have propellers, not legs or fins). Then 'sail' (no, you need wind for that). I was a bit stuck. And then I thought of 'fly'.
Now, 'flying' normally requires wings and involves the air, although penguins effectively 'fly' with their wings underwater - amazingly well, in fact; so different from the Chaplin-eseque hop n' waddle they adopt on land. My submarines had steering fins, and of course like aeroplanes, they have propellers (impellers, technically). Flying also suggests ease and speed, and living underwater, it wouldn't be used for anything else. So I felt justified in having my Tethyans in their future undersea Colonies using the word 'to fly' for the act of piloting a submarine; a thousand years hence, there are no aeroplanes, and the meaning could easily shift.
But could it? Well, here are some examples of everyday words that don't quite mean what they used to:
to dial a number - most telephones have buttons (real or virtual), not an actual dial.
to turn on - valid for old-fashioned gaslights with their valves (or a dimmer), but not valid for anything that we turn on by pressing a button.
screen - an interesting one. A screen used to - and still sometimes does - mean something to obscure the view. As far as I'm aware, screen with the idea of a display evolved from firescreens or bathscreens, both of which quickly became ornamented or decorated so that they stopped being a simple barrier, and became objects of visual curiosity in their own right.
quad-bike - OK, bit tenuous this one, since this is hardly an everyday word, but quad of course means four, and bike (from bicycle) means two wheels... Now, bike clearly means something you ride.
burger famously from Hamburger, meaning 'something or someone from Hamburg', not a patty (whether made of ham, or anything else).
to rewind - valid for anything that is actually wound, like magnetic-tape for video or audio, not for digital media.
similarly, to scroll - swiping with your finger across a touchscreen is not unravelling a roll of parchment.
And finally, my own favourite, which is not a word but an icon - that small floppy-disc that you click on to save something, in an era when floppies have all but vanished.
So, pedants everywhere, beware. Words are not things that can easily be penned in and held immobile in some semantic straitjacket. They change. Sometimes in the most amazing ways.
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Great reader's insight, thanks! I actually hadn't (consciously) considered that, but you're right: to a Tethyan, at least a Pioneer, the water is something to be enjoyed, not feared. Hunt For Red October is a great submarine film (I read the book, but waaaaaaay back on a teenage trip to France, and all I can remember is the feeling that I could build my own sub' after the technical stuff), and like The enemy below, it's a more accurate description of the cat-n-mouse of unsighted submarine warfare. I deliberately played fast and loose with the restriction on seeing far underwater to allow suspense when I wanted it, and excitement when I didn't... Author's privilege.
Something else that I remembered after writing this post: a documentary about a personal submarine that was described as 'flying' superfast underwater - it may have been a distant ancestor of the DeepFlight Super Falcon (I saw the doc in 1990; other personal submarines are available, like this other amazingly awesome one). The Super Falcon doesn't look exactly like a MANTA, by the way; MANTA's are even more cool.
I think also in terms of Thalassa as an action adventure type story using the language of flight works much better. The chase scenes are like dog fights, rather than the plodding slow motion chases of, say, Hunt for Red October (if I've remembered that film right).