A Matter of Semantics...or not

Has your imagination or curiosity been "peeked" by something you saw or heard? Maybe it's been "peaked" by a beautiful piece of music or a gorgeous sunset. Interestingly, I've seen very little mention of anyone's imagination or curiosity being "piqued" by anything.

From as far back as I can remember words have intrigued me. I anxiously waited for the newest copy of Reader's Digest to arrive in the mail so I could take the Word Power quiz or try my hand at the analogies game. I enjoyed doing crossword puzzles and even created some of my own. When teachers required that we write our spelling words in sentences for practice it was not unusual for me to come up with a poem or little story. It took me a long time to find a word in the dictionary because there were always so many other interesting words along the way that begged me to read their definitions first.

When I was told I didn't have to major in the sciences to get into dental school and that I should major in a subject I really liked since I would just have to repeat all the upper division science classes anyway, I changed my major to English Literature. I loved it.

Words, dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias, pens and paper are all so very dear to me. I'll tell you right now that I'm not perfect in my writing. My sentence structure sometimes leaves something to be desired and I often suffer from comma trauma. I too, occasionally fall victim to the misuse of a word or two. I've always told my children, now grown, and I tell my grandson: don't use a word unless you know it's meaning.

That was part of my training growing up. If we didn't know what a word meant, well then, we were told, "Look it up!" We had several dictionaries in the house. There was the old blue one, well worn and falling apart that my father received when he was in the service. My Godmother gave me an American Heritage dictionary when I went off to college, which I truly treasured. My mother bought a 500 pound behemoth dictionary from someplace (of course that's an exaggeration, it was only about 100 pounds! {just kidding, but it was really big and heavy!}) and Dad built a special stand in our library to hold it. Then there were all the sundry smaller dictionaries that we acquired throughout the years. One Christmas, my mother gave all the grandchildren dictionaries; nice, hardcover, Webster dictionaries.

These days of information overload when I peruse the blogs and websites I am constantly astounded by the lack of care in choosing words or forms of words. I'm sure it's mainly because people don't know better:

• a pear of jeans
• going for a plain ride
• having a really grate time
• having trouble finding there way over they're to see what their doing
• writing something that will really peek your interest

And the list goes on. It was the last one that inspired this entry. To peek is to glance or look quickly. A peak is a high point or something that comes to a point like a mountain top and to pique is to arouse or provoke.

There are some people who may label me as a language cop. Nah, I'm really not that vested in other people's use of the language even though it sometimes makes me cringe. However, coming from a long line of educators of one sort or another and as a person who values education and correct speech, I believe these beautiful United States could benefit greatly from her citizens taking a little more care in their approach to language. But hey, that' just my opinion. Did this article pique your interest?