By Glen Turner – Special to the Sydenham Current
Words. I love words.
They can make you laugh, tease you, make you mad, make you excited… and make you nuts!
That word ‘nuts’ is exactly what I mean… about making you nuts!
It’s what’s called an MMW, or a ‘Multiple Meaning Word.’
Why? Well, that simple word can mean crazy, something to eat, or even a hmmm, male body part.
Cup – There’s a ‘cup’ of coffee, or it’s the ‘thingy’ that the golf ball goes into on the green, or a measured amount for a recipe… or even something to COVER that same male body part!
You get it now, I assume.
I’ll bet that any reader will have now come up with tons of examples.
I’ll offer a few more, just to think about.
How about… ‘bar’? You can drink in one, jump over one at a track meet, or buy it in chocolate form.
Then there’s ‘right.’ It can mean correct, or a direction, or even be used to describe a type of status… as in, ‘human right.’
I can swim in a ‘pool’, or play it as a table game with coloured balls and cues, or even pool results from a campaign.
I won’t even get into homonyms.
The ones that kids always confuse: ‘they’re’ – ‘their’ – ‘there’ – or ‘pail’ and ‘pale’… and ‘road’ and ‘rode’ – different spelling, same sound, of course.
Some of my favourite comedians, like George Carlin and Steven Wright, have made their careers playing with words.
As a teacher, writer and director myself, I love to play with words, especially for the humour.
But, seriously… I think that the English language exists just to drive us all NUTS!
