WRITING: Word Meanings

After a very informative and exciting meeting of our writing group last night, I awoke this morning with the remnant of a dream that happened some time during my sleep. I recall a flash of a dictionary page and in bold type a word I had used in one of my poems that had listed as its third or fourth definition, “racial epithet.” I don’t remember what the word was, or even if it was something I had actually written, but it brought to mind how progress changes word meanings. Innocent words may take on disparaging slang meanings over time, and as younger generations understand them, they also look to the use by older generations as stereotypical, denigrating, or intolerant without realizing that the intention is not such.

I suppose this is one of the reasons why I am bothered by political correctness, aside from its value as a paintbrush effect; a new generation telling an older one that a word means something other than what they are used to. Of course the solution is simple, for the older folks, realize that the word has changed and stop using it; for the young, realize that the word has changed and no harm was meant.

But one of the phrases that I am nostalgically reluctant to accept is “Once upon a time.” These words hold such magic when we are young; a story, an adventure to another time and place, and we listen in awe to anything that starts out with this opening line.

But as we age, “once upon a time” takes on a more intimate nostalgia of the past—our own. No longer an invitation to ride a magic carpet or slay dragons, but a narrative of past glory or pain, or a litany of what could have been. The future is no longer open to us with “once upon a time” but is a past that is over and done.