Jul

5

Word of the Week: July 5th, 2008

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

July 5, 2008 |

I’ve often heard people describe themselves as an avid fan or heard them say they have an avid interest in something without thinking too much about the word avid itself, even though it seems like a strange, interesting little word. When a friend suggested over a game of Scrabble that avid should be a Word of the Week, I knew I couldn’t turn it down, and that I really didn’t know what the word meant–and that I’d sometimes used it myself in spite of this. In the context it seemed to mean “strong” or “sincere”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, though, it means, “Ardently desirous, extremely eager, greedy.” With that definition it sounds like someone who’s an avid fan would be more likely to be a stalker or have a pathological obsession. The adjective, after all, derives from a Latin verb, avere, meaning “to crave”.

Before reading the dictionary’s definition I thought I had an avid interest in words and their origins, and, although it’s not an obsession, I think I still do. It could be that I’m reading too much into the definition, but also words are defined by their use. As Humpty Dumpty said in Through The Looking Glass, “When I use a word…it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”

 


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