Phrases and Meanings

You get along decently making a fool of yourself and then start feeling the sudden urge to write something meaningful (which is probably a way of making a greater fool of yourself than you were doing while you were trying). The problem is that you rack your brains and plumb the (extremely shallow) depths of your mind and find that you have never acquired any meaningful knowledge all your life. With the stubbornness of someone, who rarely gets an idea but holds on to the one he does get no matter how absurd it is, you are unwilling to let go of the dream to write something meaningful. Well! The next best thing to writing something meaningful is to write about the meaning of something. (I have a nagging suspicion that the first dictionary was written by a guy like me - finding that he could write nothing meaningful he went ahead and started tabulating the meanings of words)

Having done a bit of 'Words and Meanings', I thought I could perhaps turn my attention to some phrases that are used to mean something else than what the dictionary would say they mean. I do not mean to address a phrase like "Good Morning", which does not necessarily mean that the person saying it has seriously assessed the characteristics of the morning and found it to be good or that he is praying with all his heart that the morning be good for you. It is merely a way of saying, "I see you and you have reason to believe I can recognize you and would expect me to acknowledge that I have seen you", as all of us know. Indeed most of us would be surprised to learn that the literal meaning is at all different - and that it is probably a shortened form of "Wish you a good morning".

Now, then, the more important among us utter a curt "Morning". It is not that they merely want to state the fact that it was morning without any unsubstantiated allegations about its nature. It is the same "I see you etc. etc." but with the additional meaning of "I do not need to be polite to you." Most of them, however, do not necessarily think that you were nervously hanging around wondering whether it was really morning after all till they came around and officially declared it to be so. Of course there are some who are actually surprised that you could have any doubts about the fact that the Sun would have retired abashed - like a guest who came too early to a party - unless they declared it to be morning but such wonder-beings are in a minority, believe me.

Uhoh! It looks like I have behaved like the guy who gets the microphone and says, "I will not keep you guys waiting for dinner too long" at the start of his speech and then pauses for breath only after an hour or so. Having said that I would not take up your time with descriptions about the meaning of "Good Morning" as a phrase, I have waxed eloquent about it. We shall get to the next phrase later then. Adios, till then (and, NO, it is not a threat!)