Most of us have three different vocabularies suited for different levels of communication. The largest and most sophisticated is usually the one we understand more than we use, developed through the things we read. Often, we have only a partial understanding of the meanings of some of the words we read and never speak or write them ourselves. We don’t always pronounce them correctly to ourselves when we read them, which causes embarrassment when we have reason to speak them aloud.

When we express our own thoughts through writing and planned speech, we use the language we have learned mostly from school and example, expressions and technical terms from newscasts, teachers, etc. This is made up of our best grammar and most accurate words, depending on our level of education (both formal and absorbed through experience.)

For most of us, the vocabulary we use the most and with the most confidence is our every-day conversational language. It includes colloquialisms, contractions, incomplete sentences, figures of speech, terms related to our work, sports, interests, hobbies, and even slang. It is the language our parents and peers use, tempered to a degree by our schooling and our desire to be clearly understood. It is a goldmine if idioms and phrases that confuse foreigners who think they know the English language, and the bane of middle-school English teachers. It has nearly become a separate language in its own right and I sometimes wonder just where some of it originated.

One word that has puzzled me for a long time is the word ‘keep’ used to mean ‘continue’ as in ‘Keep doing that’ or even more mystifying ‘keep on doing that’. What does the ‘on’ contribute to the meaning? Aside from its use as a verb, ‘keep’ can also be a noun referring to a dungeon or a stronghold such as ‘castle keep’ in the days of armored knights, moats and drawbridges. Similarly, I wonder why someone felt compelled to say, ‘try and do that’ when they must surely have meant ‘try to do that.’ ‘Try’ and ‘do’ most certainly do not mean the same thing, and once trying has succeeded it is no longer necessary to try, so the phrase is redundant in a peculiar way.

All this muddles the meanings of words and points out how we are making our language less precise by attributing too many different meanings and usages to words we have long used and understood, thus blurring and weakening their effectiveness. In a world where we are far too eager to adopt nonsense words and to steal cryptic words and give them new definitions, why don’t we have enough imagination to create new words when we need then, rather than corrupt specifically useful words and render them vague? A clear example of such abuse is the word ‘segue.’ It has long been strictly a musicrelated word referring to transitions, such as between movements. Somewhere in recent times, somebody decided to use it to refer to other types of transitions and it has since been thrown carelessly about, intended to mean any sort of change from one thing to another – including job changes, divorce, failing eyesight, and has even become the name for a personal power-scooter!

Every year, roughly 1,000 new words and terms are added to the English language. Among recent additions are; manspreading, turducken, selfie, wine o’clock, awesomesauce, spice bag, goated, ghosted and Barbiecore. A large number of new words are either slang, or words destined to become outdated within a few years (many are frivolous, silly and merely fads.) I think it’s too bad we haven’t come up with some truly useful and lasting words that would rescue some of the more serious and specific words that we are now corrupting and rendering vague.

I know that, as language has evolved since the beginning, the meanings of words have changed to fit new ideas. That’s why we need new words to serve new ideas, circumstances and technologies. What I don’t understand is why, when we are constantly devising new words, we seem to find it necessary to corrupt useful existing words rather than create new ones.