I wonder what makes a word good or bad. One of comedian George Carlin’s monologues was “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television.” Four-letter words dominated the list. We may say a couple “made love” or “slept together” but the f-word, which is often a more accurate description of the interaction, is banned in polite society. On the farm, I shoveled a lot of manure, but I mustn’t call it s***.
When I was growing up, we used a lot of euphemisms. Instead of saying a mother-to-be was pregnant, we referred to her as ‘expecting’ or ‘having a date with the stork’.
As a writer, I find myself looking up words I know to make sure the one I’m using is exactly right. Those, which in one context seem to be interchangeable, can be misleading in another. I can write, “It was a starry night,” or, “It was a starry evening,” without altering the meaning much. If I write, “The woman wore a nightgown,” your mind’s eye flashes a much different picture than if I write, “The woman wore an evening gown.”
What we say and what others hear isn’t always the same thing. Our own experiences color how we interpret words. For example, when someone says, “We had a little snow last night,” a person from Wisconsin expects snowplows to clear away three or four inches before drivers start their morning commute. A person living in Washington, D.C., knows an inch of the white stuff will paralyze the morning rush hour.
What have you said that was misconstrued by the listener with disastrous results?