Versaries
I have a beef with the way people in our society use certain words. More specifically, I have a beef with people who choose to ignore that words have specific meanings. Now, my friend Ryan has frequently chastised me for bringing up this beef, saying that I need to recognise the dynamic life of language, and that, as a result, a word that meant one thing may evolve into meaning something different. I do recognise this, but my beef continues with some things.
This beef is somewhat shocking, as I generally misuse words, and I frequently aim to contribute to the body of neologisms that exist in our language. In fact, I long for the day when a word's etymology is traced back to me, rather than some archaic German form from the 12th Century AD.
Notwithstanding, I wish to make public my beef with the way one word, in particular, is used. The word is anniversary. As with many words in our language, it was brought to us from Latin, from the two roots "annus", meaning "yearly" and "versus", which is a form of "vertere" which means "to return". Thus, an anniversary is a yearly return. I wish to focus on the fact that it is yearly. Not weekly, not monthly, but yearly. So my beef is with people who utter such nonsensicalities as "It is our three week anniversary!" What does that mean??? How can you celebrate the yearly return of an event that occurred just three weeks earlier?
I have no idea how this word got kidnapped and misappropriated in such a way, but, to me, it reflects a rather cynical viewpoint of life that has been deeply embedded in one's psyche. The only reason it would be necessary to celebrate an event after such a short period of time, and to celebrate it by attaching the word "anniversary" to it, is that there are doubts as to whether or not the actual anniversary will be met.
And to think, the whole problem could be solved by just dropping the prefix of the word. "It is our five week versary!" But, of course, that would just be silly.
This beef is somewhat shocking, as I generally misuse words, and I frequently aim to contribute to the body of neologisms that exist in our language. In fact, I long for the day when a word's etymology is traced back to me, rather than some archaic German form from the 12th Century AD.
Notwithstanding, I wish to make public my beef with the way one word, in particular, is used. The word is anniversary. As with many words in our language, it was brought to us from Latin, from the two roots "annus", meaning "yearly" and "versus", which is a form of "vertere" which means "to return". Thus, an anniversary is a yearly return. I wish to focus on the fact that it is yearly. Not weekly, not monthly, but yearly. So my beef is with people who utter such nonsensicalities as "It is our three week anniversary!" What does that mean??? How can you celebrate the yearly return of an event that occurred just three weeks earlier?
I have no idea how this word got kidnapped and misappropriated in such a way, but, to me, it reflects a rather cynical viewpoint of life that has been deeply embedded in one's psyche. The only reason it would be necessary to celebrate an event after such a short period of time, and to celebrate it by attaching the word "anniversary" to it, is that there are doubts as to whether or not the actual anniversary will be met.
And to think, the whole problem could be solved by just dropping the prefix of the word. "It is our five week versary!" But, of course, that would just be silly.
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