We need more words

When I talked about design of a program with one of my collaborators in the development of a system for social networking, she asked "what do you mean by program?"


Her question started me thinking about the many terms in social networking and in IT generally that have been appropriated from everyday vocabulary.

I thought we were designing a system, which to me met a way of working. system to an IT professional means hardware. I thought we were networking - each of us contributing our knowledge and experience to the whole group and involving others we knew so that we could use their expertise, too. It seems networking is done with blue cables in IT. Of course these are not the sort of cables that used to carry text messages fifty years ago. They were named after the cables that carried the message, but soon became synonymous with the piece of paper they were printed on.

According to the Global Language Monitor there are an estimated 1 million English words.

The monitor also says that there are:

• 450,000 words listed in the Merriam-Webster's 3rd International edition, according to its introduction;
• fewer than 100,000 words in the French language;
• About 50,000 ideograms in the various Chinese dialects (though countless more words);
• in the order of 7,000 human languages and dialects
• 12,143 different words of a total 787,137 words in the English version of the king James Bible,
• 8,674 different words in the Hebrew Old Testament,
• 5,624 words in the Greek New Testament;
• 24,000 differing words to be found in the complete works of Shakespeare, about 1,700 of which he invented.

Even with so many words we need to double up.

Left and right mean more than sides. Top and bottom are not just a toy and a base. Tear can be pronounced two ways, each with a different meaning.

As far I can see, the word set is the one that has the most meanings. think about it, what does it mean to you?

Place down? Collection? Harden? A series of tennis games? Prepare to run?

My favourite resource, the One Look Dictionary search found definitions in 99 dictionaries and gave 45 different meanings in their quick definitions - a feature that normally has between one and three meanings. By contrast the word system only featured in 66 dictionaries and had a mere 9 quick definitions. Reification was only found in 18 dictionaries with 2 quick definitions, while bricolage only made it into 12 dictionaries without a quick definition.

Back to the program that I thought I was designing, no it was not the booklet that lists the cast and order of events in a theatre, it was not to be broadcast on TV, it was not even computer software. It was a set of training materials.

On the subject of words, do you know why golf was given that name? All of the other four letter obscenities were already taken.