"The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love." ~Margaret Atwood
Can we come up with fifty-two substitute words for love?
I'll get us started with a couple.
1. Adoration
2. Union
3. Passion
The comment box is open.
First, the debunking bit:
ReplyDelete"The Great Inuit Vocabulary Hoax is anthropology's contribution to urban legends. It apparently started in 1911 when anthropologist Franz Boaz casually mentioned that the Inuit—he called them "Eskimos," using the derogatory term of a tribe to the south of them for eaters of raw meat—had four different words for snow. With each succeeding reference in textbooks and the popular press the number grew to sometimes as many as 400 words.
In fact, "Contrary to popular belief, the Eskimos do not have more words for snow than do speakers of English," according to linguist Steven Pinker in his book The Language Instinct. "Counting generously, experts can come up with about a dozen.""
But also, if words such as "slush" and "sleet" count as words for snow (and I think that's the case), then shouldn't words and phrases such as "crush on" and "hots for" and "puppy love" and "platonic love" and "brotherly love" and so on count for love? And if that's the case, I bet we could come up with a lot of words to describe the various mixtures of affection and longing people feel for others.
ReplyDeleteeeksy:
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments... I'm no linguist and I am not about to debate the factuality of Margaret Atwoods assertion in the quote - only the quote itself and the supposition that perhaps a word as significant as love ought to be right up there with other words in terms of importance. Assuming that quantity is of course some measure of consequence.
Conversely - I would suppose that one could take the opposite end of the argument and maintain the position that the ultimate measure of a word's value could be that it was so highly significant that there could be no other defining substitution.
Still, I fall back to my origional pursuit of words that could perhaps be substituted for love in one form or the other somewhat like in your second comment – except I would prefer we stick to single words and not two or more word phases. Perhaps we won't reach fifty-two. Perhaps we'll exceed it; I'm just interested in other people's substitute words.
4. Committment
ReplyDelete5. Desire
6. Selflessness
7. Sacrifice
8. Affection
9. Worship
Michael--This is more difficult than it would seem. I keep wanting to put it into concrete images! Will happily check back to see others' continuing contributions.
Good idea, BTW.
Thanks Cindy...
ReplyDeleteI'll repost the list maybe tomorrow and encourage more participation. It is difficult. I think with each new word it seems to be a narrower aspect of love. It is like if love were the top of a pyramid the body would encompass all these things.