Recently, some friends and I were discussing language; how society impacts language, and how people’s self-edits are non-edits for one who is paying close enough attention. Also brought up briefly is the way language changes in the face of the society using it. To anyone who has studied the history of a language even in small amounts, it is well known that new words are often introduced into a language to convey a higher level of emotion than the current words available.
Not to break thought too much here, but I would like to note that I am only going to be referring to American English in this post. The concepts are mostly universal, but the examples won’t work except for the language in question. I think that will be obvious, but there’s the warning anyway.
The most accessible examples are exclamatory words and ‘curse’ words. The idea being that each generation, at some point, wants to shock their parents in their push for independence and their testing of boundaries. So each generation starts using words that the previous generation used seldom more frequently and in a more common manner. As the younger generation uses the ‘curse’ word commonly, in time it becomes just another word without power and with zero shock value. Once the next generation comes along, they have to find a new word with which to shock their elders. It is in this way that ‘darn’ is no longer a bad word, giving way to ‘damn’. It is the reason ‘humbug’ is no longer a profanity, but something we associate with a character in a Christmas story. There are more recent examples that todays society still considers vulgar, of which I am sure you are aware. The next generation of profanity is not my subject though, so I will simply trust that you know the current words considered profane and continue.
My question is not concerning profanity, but other words that should have power and meaning, but have been watered down to the point of worthlessness except in the most casual of conversation. Specifically ‘love’. As Americans, we love everything. We love the Yankees. We love casual fridays. We love ice cream. We love riding our bikes. We love twitter. We love dogs. We love Susan and Matthew and Jodie and Diane and Steve and the color Ann painted the walls of her living room. And that scarf Analynn bought? The Helvetica one. Yeah, we love that too. We are a society searching for acceptance by screaming out how much we love everything and everyone.
So my question is simple. What word do we use now that ‘love’ doesn’t mean ‘love’ anymore? Do we just not use the words available? We certainly aren’t stuck using the same word ‘love’ for everything from the love you have for your spouse to the love you have for that new shirt design you saw this morning on busted tees. Are we? The greek have at least 5 different words for love depending on what degree/type of love is being referred to. Now for all I know, they do the same thing with their words that we do with ours by claiming to feel eros for everything. Or, perhaps as we do, they simply ignore all but one of their words for ‘love’.
We do have some words that are usable, but for the most part, we do not have anything in regular use that is a direct replacement. We have ‘affection’, ‘devotion’, ‘fondness’, ‘passion’, etc, but try one of those in the sentence ‘I love you’. Doesn’t quite work, does it?
Now I am probably missing something obvious. It has been a long and restless week, so I’m confident someone has an obvious replacement ready for our use. But this came to mind late last night, and in my half asleep state, I couldn’t come up with anything to replace ‘love’ with. So here we are, where I’ll let you all take a shot at replacing a word we have smothered in overuse.
… well, ok. Maybe we don’t love the Yankees.
