Do I What?

 

                                                                           
I love my wife. I do. I really do. And I've been in love with her for about 55 years now. In fact our 53^rd anniversary was just a few weeks ago. But that love has changed over the years. Let me explain.

love, like, affect, fancy, care for, take an interest in, be partial to, sympathize with; be in love with; have a love for, entertain a love for, harbor cherish a love for; regard, revere; take to, bear love to, be wedded to; set one's affections on; make much of, feast one's eyes on; hold dear, prize; hug, cling to, cherish, pet., burn; adore, idolize, love to distraction, aimer eperdument, dote on, dote upon., take a fancy to, look sweet upon; become enamored; fall in love with, lose one's heart;

desire, excite love; win the heart, gain the heart, win the affections, gain the affections, secure the love, engage the affections; take the fancy of, have a place in the heart, wind round the heart; attract, attach, endear, charm, fascinate, captivate, bewitch, seduce, enamor, enrapture, turn the head., get into favor; ingratiate oneself, insinuate oneself, worm oneself; propitiate, curry favor with, pay one's court to, faire l'aimable, set one's cap at, flirt.ⁱ

While it hasn't been found in anything he wrote, George Bernard Shaw is usually credited with observing that the US and Great Britain are “separated by a common language.” However true it may be, even if we limit the population being assessed to natives of the United States, the plethora of a word's synonyms may make word use hazardous. The large number of words doesn't mean that they can be used to clarify a meaning. The case in point for today's discussion, as you can see above, is the word “love.”

Love.

“Do You Love Me?”

That's what Tevye asked Golde in “Fiddler On The Roof.”

It seems a straightforward enough question, but it's met with confusion and consternation. It had never occurred to either of them to ask. The issue had never come up. Their marriage was arranged and there was no courtship.

Tevye: “The first time I met you

Was on our wedding day

I was scared'

Golde: “I was shy”

Tevye: “I was nervous”

Golde: “So was I”

Tevye: “But my father and my mother

Said we'd learn to love each other

And now I'm asking, Golde

Do you love me?”

The question was direct. What had never been on the table was there now. Did she love him? In context, there can be little doubt about what he meant. And Golde understood as she answered, “I suppose I do.” That understanding is even more clear when Tevye declares, somewhat hesitantly, “And I suppose I love you too.” The love they felt was one of comfort, familiarity, and, perhaps, resignation. It lacked passion, but they could not envision being without each other.

Yet here as elsewhere the word “love” is more defined by the context than by anything else. And without that word it is hard to express the feeling we may have for our children, for chocolate, for a parade, for our country, a platonic friend, a cool breeze on a summer day, a crush, and certainly not the passion a teen-ager experiences when seeing his (or her) heartthrob, nor the passionate, hot, urgent love so commonly depicted in the movies or on television.ⁱⁱ There are numerous synonyms offered, but when we want to use an “extreme” word, we always wind up with “love.” There's no common substitute that expresses the same degree of affection while suggesting a particular kind of object or activity.ⁱⁱⁱ

I'm more likely to deplore a person, shrink from an ugly monster, recoil at the proposed policies of the other political party, loathe an enemy, or scorn a walk in the woods with a serial killer. And, when appropriate, I can abominate, execrate, detest, or abhor. There's a wide choice of extreme words for “hate.”^iv I can even despise chocolate, but that's unlikely.

English is a huge language,^v and among the many major advantages it has over many others are the facts that words can be used in so many different and seemingly unrelated ways (for example, “kick” the habit, “kick” and scream, “kick” the can, “kick” the bucket), and also that there is a plethora of nuanced expressions – especially adjectives – for almost anything. That doesn't mean, however, that no changes are necessary. As is true of the word “love,” and many other common nouns and verbs, additional words may be needed. New terms are being introduced daily and the expansion of the vocabulary is both inevitable and healthy. That's your assignment. Help us define “love” better than we've done.

Combining meanings and deleting words, on the other hand, may be harmful.^vi As Big Brother demonstrated, the limitation of a word's meaning can limit the thoughts of the word's user.

“Do you love me?”

There may be two minds with but a single thought – but what is it?

Next episode: “For Better Or For Worse” – Hard to tell.

i      Synonyms for the verb “love.” There are equally long catalogs for nouns and adjectives, but I won't use any more space. This list is from some on-line thesaurus (with a few minor changes) – I don't remember which. I hope I'm not violating any copyright laws. This isn't meant to make any money for me or to be used as a thesaurus. It just seemed to be the best way to illustrate a point I want to make.

ii     At least I don't know of any single word usable in polite conversation that can convey this kind of love, and no words that can express the extreme pleasure of the others.

iii    That's not true of all languages. In some there are different words which can be used to designate the different types of love. (In some there are other differentiations that English lacks – perhaps specific words for the donning of shoes, a shirt, or another garment.) We lack a word that says “Let's not get into any discussions about love, I just want to jump into bed with you.” (Who wants to talk then anyway?) And it would be nice if there were extreme and specific words that connoted patriotic or other non-personal love as well as parental and non-sexual love of other people.

iv     Unfortunately, even though there is a wide variety of words that can be used to denote extreme hatred, they, too, require context and can't express the object of the hatred unless it is spelled out.

v      The large number of words in English – possibly larger than that in any other tongue – is not a substitute for words that are more expressive of particular ideas. In fact, the requirement that some words have an extensive delineation of the context may be the basis of the need for so many words.

vi     Consider a participant's loss of immediate understanding when, during a conversation, and for primarily political reasons, words like “marriage” and “partner” are used to describe same sex unions as well as those between members of opposite sexes. However appropriate the different unions, not that it's anyone's business, the language suffers because the old term is being made to cover very different situations, rather than would be the case with the creation of a new word to characterize a newly legitimated circumstance. Such merging of different ideas in a single word my cause confusion in the hearer. The blurring of distinctions leads to the blurring of thought.