Speaking of Elephants
I'm reading the fourth in Jim Benn's Billy Boyle series, and the term "seeing the elephant" came up. I wasn't familiar with it but it wasn't hard to figure out that it refers to being in combat, the idea being that once a person has "seen the elephant" he's forever changed.
I love learning such words and phrases, whether they come from the past, from different sections of the country, or from social groups outside my experience. I recall that in 1969 my husband-then boyfriend-just home from Vietnam, introduced me to the phrase "bought the farm." As a lover of words, I appreciate the practical elegance of such idioms, expressing so much in so few words.
Teens seem to have an inborn talent for new vocabulary: inventing it, spreading it, and later rejecting it as outdated. Part of what ages us is our clinging to the clever words and phrases of our youth after they are long out of favor. At the same time, we come off as ridiculous if we try too hard to adopt the current phraseology. I can't see myself talking like the kids do, and thank God for that.
As writers we get the best of both worlds. Whatever our personal speech standards, we can try out the slang, syntax, idioms, and vocabulary of just about anyone in our writing, and if we do it right, we're golden. That's cool, even if "cool" no longer is the term for it.
I love learning such words and phrases, whether they come from the past, from different sections of the country, or from social groups outside my experience. I recall that in 1969 my husband-then boyfriend-just home from Vietnam, introduced me to the phrase "bought the farm." As a lover of words, I appreciate the practical elegance of such idioms, expressing so much in so few words.
Teens seem to have an inborn talent for new vocabulary: inventing it, spreading it, and later rejecting it as outdated. Part of what ages us is our clinging to the clever words and phrases of our youth after they are long out of favor. At the same time, we come off as ridiculous if we try too hard to adopt the current phraseology. I can't see myself talking like the kids do, and thank God for that.
As writers we get the best of both worlds. Whatever our personal speech standards, we can try out the slang, syntax, idioms, and vocabulary of just about anyone in our writing, and if we do it right, we're golden. That's cool, even if "cool" no longer is the term for it.
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