462 words on why I love words

By Richard Nieva

I love words. I love words so much that I am using them to write this whole column. Not just part of it. All of it.

No, it's not that I am particularly diplomatic, and I am not even the lovelorn emotional-guy-done-wrong who uses words as weapons.

I just really appreciate having a language to speak, to use every day. And the fact that each of us utters hundreds of words every day makes us take them for granted. Yes, the stock price has dropped on words -- like every other stock out there right now.

As speakers in the postmodern world, we take in and expel words so much that we don't even really hear them as individual entities, but rather as larger, vast ideas. We don't hear the words themselves, absorb them, take the time to realize where they come from.

Now don't get me wrong. I suppose this is a good thing -- the mark of an efficient, communicative language. But since we've lost value in where these words come from, I have decided to make up derivations as I see fit. Why, you ask? Because I love words.

(And because as an English major I've gotten quite used to using my artistic license in writing -- so much so that I fear it may be taken away for recklessness.)

For example, take the word "masquerade." After all, it's almost Halloween. Masquerade, etymology: from the French "mascarade," meaning "masked party or dance" or the Spanish "mascarata," meaning "a ball at which masks are worn," circa 1590.

Not anymore. I propose that it come from a mix, or portmanteau, of the words "mascara," "parade" and/or "charade." I mean, why not?

The next one gets a little deeper. I'm a firm believer of writing as therapy. And if you ask any writer why he or she writes, some would probably tell you that it is a chance for him or her to make an ideal reality -- the world according to him or her.

Therefore, my next example is the word "poetry." One source says it is from the Middle English "poetrie," circa 1350-1400.

Nice try, but I want to suggest that it comes from the words "potential" and "symmetry."

Potential is associated with possibility, capability, chance. And symmetry is associated with an excellence in proportion, which some would call perfection.

So by my logic, poetry can literally be defined as a "chance for perfection."

And this is why I love words.

So please, mean what you say. Take notice of the words that are coming out of your mouth. When you say the word "it," think of the enormous number of people who have said it before you, and the amount of people who will say it after you. It's mind-blowing.