It's All Geek to Me

"Meh."

Three letters that express so much indifference, laziness, mild disappointment, and a general malaise to one's own existence, but there is also much more to that small interjection. It proves a point that language is not static. It morphs (like a verbal giant mechazoid,) with each new generation, each new year, and even with each new Netflix original.

In case you are unaware, Meh is a term that was coined by The Simpsons all the way back in 1994, when a librarian used it to react to the fact that voting records weren't classified in Springfield. Since then it has entered our vernacular as a dictionary-definable word. That was not The Simpsons' only contribution to English language, Cromulent and Craptacular both entered our collective vocabulary after being featured on the cultural juggernaut of a show, as well.

Language is an integral part of the human experience. Even those without the ability to speak or hear still engage in the use of language through other means. As such, the way we speak inherently affects the way we see and talk about the world around us, but that is not a one way street. The way we see the world and our interactions with it also affects the way we speak and talk about things. Additionally, our cultural experiences and understandings also influence our word choices, speech patterns, and other linguistic idiosyncrasies. This is nothing new either, our language (regardless of what language you speak) has been changing and evolving ever since our great x 10,000 grandfather grunted about someone not picking up after themselves.

I mean who leaves their dirty loincloth just lying around on the cave floor. "What were you raised in a barn?" (Which of course would mean that not only had you managed to move beyond the hunter-gather phase of civilization, but you had developed complex ideas of animal husbandry, crop rotation, feed storage, and construction techniques utilizing lumber.)

Realistically, cavemen would not have used the phrase What were you raised in a barn? I am sure they had other culturally relevant phrases to use when insulting their off-spring about their untidiness. I have no idea what those phrases were, but I am almost certain they had them, because humans shape our language with allusion and metaphor. We use our understanding of the world to influence the way we talk to one another, and I am not just talking about cliched lines that your grandfather might toss out.

For example: Toxic. The word traces its origins back to the Greek root-word toxon, which literally means a bow, the instrument you would use to shoot arrows from. That seems like an odd word to evolve into something that basically means poison, but not when you consider the story of Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra. The hydra's blood was poisonous, and after Hercules managed to kill the beast he dipped his arrows in its blood. He then used the poisoned arrows throughout the rest of his adventures. So in ancient Greek, saying something was toxic literally meant you were saying something was "from the bow of Hercules."

To them it was an allusion, a cultural idiom based around a story. The word then evolved into Latin and eventually into English to mean poisonous, with the original cultural reference lost to the ages, (unless you Google it.) More to the point, this is not the collective lexicon being influenced by just a person's direct experience with the world, but by a myth. Similarly calling someone Superman or Sherlock are two words not based on experience but on stories, mythologies in their own right, yet they are used commonly in everyday speech. Sticking with the comic book theme, Kryptonite, is literally a fictional rock that weakens Superman, but we use it in passing to mean someone's weakness, their Achilles' Heel.

The ancient Greek hero Achilles was invulnerable in every spot, except for his heel, the spot where his mother held him when she dipped him into the River Styx. Most people don't think of that story or need to explain it when they use the term Achilles Heel. People just understand what it means, because language is more than just sounds we make with our mouth holes. It's a social contract we all enter into, and it's not just about common words that represent ideas. Language is about nuance and even a little poetry. Yes, you can say, "I am not great at Math," or you can say "Math is my Kryptonite." It is more expressive, and it automatically gives the listener an intense and personal understanding of what you meant.

This means that culture (and especially nerd culture,) our stories, movies, comics, literature, etc, are all ways we absorb the world. They paint the picture that we hold up to compare to the people and places that surround us. We construct our world based upon all our influences, just like the Ancient Greeks. We do not have gods, we have superheroes. We do not have traditions, we have pop culture, but it all amounts to the same. It is a lens through which our lives and our language becomes filtered. Our shared stories give us a sort of cultural shorthand. We call someone a Newb or Noob if they suck, we say something has been Nerfed, if it was made softer or easier. Words like Frak and Khalessi enter into our vocabulary because, in some ways, they are more descriptive than saying F*ck or Barbarian Queen. Some will stick and some will fall off, proving to be nothing more than a fad, but they do enter into our thinking and our world views. We experience the world not only through the things we see and touch but through the stories that we tell, because language is so much more than pointing and grunting. It is so much more than mundane observations or utilitarian sound.

As Stephen Fry once said, "Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot."

Language is also as Lisa Simpson once said, "Meh."