If you think back on all the words you’ve looked up in the past year, only to turn around and forget their definitions immediately, Martha’s New Year’s resolution sounds like a no-brainer: be a little more mindful, and take care to actually remember the meanings of words like enervate (it’s “to drain someone or something of vitality”). This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Remembering Definitions”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. Grant, like you, words are the main thing that I do.
But there are still these words that I have to look up every single time I run across them.
You have that experience, right?
Yeah, because you’re not 100% sure.
Yeah, yeah, I’m not sure. And I think my resolution for this year is that I want to be really mindful of that.
Really pay attention to those words because I think that’s the way I’m going to learn them.
Sort of like I’m trying to teach myself to remember where I left my car keys.
I read in a book that you should just tell yourself I’m putting my car keys on the table, right?
So whenever I come across a word like this, I’m going to just stop what I’m doing and tell myself I’m looking up this word and learning it once and for all.
And the latest one that I did was innervate.
Innervate.
Why?
What was holding you back on that one?
Well, you know what? I mean, when I look at the word innervate, I think it means something about agitation or energizing you.
Doesn’t it mean to take the nerves out of somebody or something?
Yes, that’s literally what it means.
Like deveining shrimp, innervating shrimp, maybe?
Thank you. I never thought about it that way.
But yeah, yeah, it goes back to a Latin word that means either nerve or sinew or bowstring.
Interesting.
And if you think about it that way, if you think about innervating as taking the nerves out, then you’re going to create a situation where something lacks vitality or strength.
So these days we use it figuratively more than literally, right?
We innervate somebody by telling them, oh, I’m sorry, you didn’t get the job, and they were innervated, something like that.
Wah, wah, wah.
Yeah, sad trombone.
Yeah, so now I’ve got that association, and I’m not going to forget it.
This is my resolution.
I think if I do this maybe once a day, then, you know, I’ll have 365 new words.
Perfect, right?
The word of day calendars.
My own personal, yeah.
We know there’s a word that stumps you.
You forget the spelling.
You forget the meaning.
No matter how many times you look it up.
No matter how many times you look it up.
You look it up, and 15 seconds later, you still can’t remember.
We know that word.
We know you have it.
Email words@waywordradio.org.
