Oddities of the English Language

Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown, met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable?

I know that I sure haven't! I was inspired to compose the following essay on the premise of having fun with words.

Enjoy, and, as always, feel free to post similar works/experiences of your own!

--Xi Hyperon


Having learned English as my native language, I’ve grown accustomed to its unusual characteristics. All the homonyms, idioms, clichés, and the like can be very confusing, despite their common use. It’s difficult for me to conceive how anyone can truly master this language, let alone communicate at all! Have you ever tried explaining to a foreigner the difference between two similar phrases? It’s difficult enough for me to understand the concept, let alone try to explain it to someone else.

Take, for example, the words “plain” and “plane.”These two words sound the same and seem innocent enough, but they have very different meanings and they can wreak havoc with your sanity. So just what is a plane figure? Is it something in the shape of a plane? Or is it something flat? Or is it a carpenter’s tool? Can you use a plane to plane a plane to make it more of a plain plane?

Sheesh!

Let’s examine the word plain. A plain figure is something ordinary and mundane, right? If you’re standing in the middle of a prairie somewhere, are you now a plain figure, because you’re standing on a plain? If you ask the farmer on the prairie, would he respond that he “just cant plain figure it out?”

So what is a figure anyway? Is it a shape? When you tell someone to go cut a figure, are you telling them to go make an impressive performance, as in the common figure of speech, or are you telling them to act literally and cut something, as with a pair of scissors? If you cut a figure in the shape of a plane, is it automatically flat, or is it in the shape of an airplane? How do you keep these things straight?!

What does the phrase “Go figure” mean? When someone tells you to “go figure,” are they telling you to go look like a number, or work out an equation? Are they telling you to deal with numbers, or think about a problem having nothing to do with numbers? Is it used as a command or simply as an idiom?

English is indeed a crazy language. Only such a language would permit one to send cargo by ship and a shipment by car or truck. Where else can one find noses that run and feet that smell? If I as a writer write, then why don’t my fingers, being such, fing? What a feat (or feet?) it would be for someone to know all the tricks of the trade, and be versed in all the English oddities. Imagine what a figure one could cut if one could determine what a combobulated or a gruntled person was. If one could figure out a clever phrase and cut a figure, even if they were a plain figure, they no longer would be figured as having a plain (or is it plane?) sense of humor.

Go figure.