Lost Vocabulary

Have you ever been talking with someone, maybe even a close friend and you say a word and they stop you because they didn’t know what the word meant? That happened to me the other day. Me and a friend were talking about a celebrity and they said something about how sexy the celebrity was. I replied with, “Yeah, but they tend to show it to everyone all the time.” They replied with, “So, more to look at,” and I said, “Gone were the days of people leaving something to the imagination and making themselves appear sultry.” They did not know what “sultry” meant. I explained that it is synonymous with our current “sexy” except it means in a more subtle way that makes you want the person more. It also got me thinking about how many older words I use every day, because I am weird, that many of the modern generations do not use or even know the meaning too. I wonder, is it because we are losing words to the void? I mean that is not to say that I know all the words and slang that is being thrown around with the younger crowd, but I think the scales are tipped in my favor of how many words they don’t know from years past. Words that do not necessarily take a large vocabulary to use or even have within your grasp. Words like comely, lexicon, dreary, etc. I can understand some words being lost. Words that have to do with yesteryear’s technology for example. I do not expect a 17-year-old to know what a beeper or 8-track is. But some words are lost even though they still exist everywhere. Like my much younger cousin did not know what an encyclopedia was. When I explained that it was a lot of information in one book, he said, “So, Google on paper.” I can understand why he didn’t know what an encyclopedia did, but he should have at least known the word “encyclopedia” existed. It’s like someone who has never known the word for the color blue still knows what blue is. I guess there is hope in the current trend of bringing many words back with new meanings. It will be hard for us of the older generation, because we will still think of the old meanings. Like I know Fortnite is a game, but I also know it doesn’t take 2 weeks to play one round. Then again, maybe the younger crowd will take sympathy on the older generations and we can all meet somewhere in the middle. But that is just one man’s opinion. Thanks for listening to me ramble. I appreciate it. See you next time.