"It could be a word!"

Some weeks ago, in a conversation with a friend, we both lost our words. We knew what we wanted to say, but ended up using sounds – that were not quite words. It was a vocal equivalent of an ellipsis, a space-filler in a sentence. The thingy, the whatchamacallit, the blah-dee-blah. There were hand motions at times, as we laughed and said "it could be a word!"

It was amusing, but we were able to continue in our conversation without going back to fill in those replaced non-words – because we didn’t need to. Our ideas had been conveyed, our thoughts communicated. "I know what you mean" was a regular comment.

And, after all, words are meant to communicate something; if the communication has taken place, then that’s fine… isn’t it?

I think in some circumstances: yes. Clearly, in the chat with my friend, we had enough context, history, and understanding to comprehend the gist of the message.

In other times, however, this type of thing could be problematic… when words have different meanings to different cultures (a cloud is a vapour mist in the sky, and online data storage), or are idiomatic (raining cats and dogs is not an atmospheric animal attack), or vary by language (saying one is embarazada in Spanish does not mean embarrassed, but pregnant), or have changed definitions over time (awful used to be positive, mean awe-full or amazing; it now carries a negative assessment of something): the whole meaning can be lost, or become offensive.

It can be helpful, then, for us to clarify that what we are saying or hearing is in fact accurate to the desired communication. If we’re speaking and see an unexpected reaction in our listener, we can clarify that we have been understood. If we are the listener who hears an outrageous or unlikely comment, we can ask for more information. If we’re reading things that have been written decades (or millennia) ago, we can be careful about understanding translation and context.

Words are powerful; and we are responsible for our own understanding. Especially if we have a strong emotional reaction to a collection of words, it can help us all to make sure that it has communicated what it needed to communicate.