Words

Today I'd like to talk to you about words we misuse and were taught to misuse. This is not spiritual merely vocabularical.

Have you ever told someone to turn the volume up or down? Have you done the same when referring to the air conditioning? Do you refer to musical notes as high and low? Well my friend are you in for a surprise, those are wrong terms. Let's think about it. When you turn the volume "up", what does that mean? does it literally rise higher above the ground? Does your stereo start floating? No, the correct term here is greater. The volume is greater or lesser, not higher or lower.

It's numbers that are causing this problem. We refer to numbers being higher and lower when this simply isn't true. Numbers are greater and fewer, more and less, not higher and lower. But somewhere in our education we were told numbers are higher and lower. We assign numbers to volume controls and this isn't wrong. Decibels measure volume, and the greater the number of decibels, the greater the volume. But we say the higher the decibels the higher the volume because numbers are high and low.

My handy Apple dictionary tells me that height is, Elevation above ground or a recognized level. To be sure, height is measured using numbers, but so is length and width. You wouldn't say one distance is higher away than another, you'd say it was further. For width you'd say wider. For Height you'd say higher. How is it that height has also been borrowed in so many things?

Not to say numbers don't interfere horizontally and circularly as well as vertically. We say a book is long. Is it really long? If you take out a measuring tape is the book really longer than others? Now, it may be that the book is literally wider. I've heard the phrase "That was a thick book", but really while you may be talking about the actual thickness of the book, odds are you are talking about the time it took to read it. Which brings us to time. People say "That took a long time" or refer to amounts of time. The correct term here is duration. Time and length really muck each other up. Just try to start talking about time without using the terms long, short, amount.

Let's take a look at music. Music takes everything we've talked about and uses them in the worst way. We talk about notes being high and low, or being long and short. Notes are measured in frequency and duration, not height and length. "Ah," you say, "But look at a piano, you look at a piano and you can tell that it goes from low notes to high notes." No you can't. A pianos are horizontal, not vertical. If a pianos notes went from low to high, each key would be physically higher than the other, making a most interesting instrument. "So you're saying a piano goes from right to left then" Not necessarily. I will admit that the frequency of notes are laid out from lowest to highest starting at the far left and moving to the far right, but do you play a piano from left to right? No, you play all over the place at different times. They are placed in that order for ease of use.

It seems everything we do is focused on up and down and left to right. We read from right to left, we learn numbers in a linear fashion: 1,2,3 . . . you turn your volume knob to the right to make it "higher" you change the channels on your T.V. "up" and "down". The worst is written music. In written music notes actually are higher and lower on the page and everything moves neatly from left to right.

It is interesting to note we read left to right, but top to bottom instead of bottom to top. I would think with everything we do referring to direction, moving from bottom to top would make more since. Oh well.

I guess what I"m getting at is that high and low, long and short, left to right all have their place in terms of ease of learning and points of reference, but we need to expand our minds beyond these tools of the trade.

Below are common phrases using several of the words I've talked about. Where there are errors, I'll offer more correct suggestions.

While one could be "high on their horse" so to say, it would be incorrect to refer to someone other than a builder or pilot or hot air balloonist as a "High achiever". I would suggest "Greater achiever" or "More achiever".

I'll give that one can be high as a kite, but "high roller" is just wrong. Maybe "A person who spends a great amount of money roller" would be more acceptable.

I'll give you the "Long arm of the law" as a witty phrase, but "Long time, no see" just won't do. Try, "Considerably more than the average duration, no see."

That's all for now. Peace.