If I wanted to tell you about my walk in New Lanark I could say it was a pleasant day out. It was. However, in using the word ‘pleasant day’ I’d instantly fear that you don’t understand me. You may think I didn't enjoy it; that somehow there is something wrong with pleasant- despite the fact that pleasant is one of my favourite adjectives for things to be- that the whole thing wasn't that positive. Pleasant is great! However, I do not want you to think I mean the word to be dismissive so I may instead. ‘I had an awesome day out’ or ‘I had a wonderful day out’. Two very big words just to ensure you definitely understand it was a positive experience.
But pleasant is something different to ‘awesome’ and ‘wonderful’. So now I am going to (belatedly but shh) join the discussion surrounding the usage of the word ‘awesome’. To aid my point (I am making a point here, I swear) I looked up (googled) a definition for awesome:
“Extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring awe.”
Google, the ever helpful superintelligence that will someday enslave humanity, also gave, usefully, an example of the correct usage of the word:
“The awesome power of the atomic bomb.”
So, in-order to have you correctly understand how good a time I had out on my walk in New Lanark, I compared it to the power of an atom bomb. My walk under some pretty beach trees by a waterfall was awesome- like the bomb that wiped out Nagasaki. The word awesome means a very different thing to me than it does to google.
Because the word may define big things, but when it comes down to it ‘awesome’ means very little. You and I know that ‘awesome’ is merely a positive word that indicates a definite feeling happiness, universally applicable to all situations from getting an unexpected day off, to finding a shade of nail varnish that matches those shoes you love to wear. People call the word overused, and I have heard many people be-moaning that now it is very hard to describe the big, grande things in life, since large words are used for small things. The dictionary (google) may give the word its definition, but what the word actually means comes from people. If people think that everyone in the social group agreeing to meet at six is ‘awesome’, then people are right.
That is awesome.
But... how do we describe big things? Big emotions? Big days? With excessive punctuation? Lots of questions? Dramatic-over-use of language devices?
I don’t know. I am a person, not people. Authors have come up with millions of paper objects that have tried to find a way to communicate emotions effectively. But right now if I wanted to talk about the feeling you get when you’ve achieved something you’ve worked hard on for a long time, that feeling is… pleasant. If I was to talk about what it’s like to get lost in your mind thinking of all the millions of little things that change over all the millions of years to turn a single celled organism into an otter- it’s odd. Two small words. But small words can mean big things.
Just think Jane Austen vs Shakespeare and you’ll probably see the point I’m attempting to make.
So yes, I had a wonderful, nay, awesome time at New Lanark. But how did I feel seeing my family again for the first time in a long time? It was nice.
