If you are not convinced by the morpheme /w/ that stands at the onset of “word” and “world,” you should at least spot the only basic orthographic difference in the two words: “L.” Remove the letter “l” and world becomes word and word dissolves into world. It therefore does not take a rocket science kind of thought to draw up the sentiment that word is the life and death of everything there is.

After all in the beginning, there was word. The word first became the world, and humanity is the crown of this wonderful creation. What this suggests is if we must keep the world rolling unperturbed on its axis, we must see to it that we keep reinventing our words – it’s the way to perpetuate our world, our life.

Words take a life.

Some words later take on special lives way beyond the limiting boundaries of a dictionary. Such words sometimes are children of pop culture. Where else do words become larger than the formal setting of a dictionary if not in the socio-linguistic ambience? They do get kicked up and down before finally making a nest in the book of word meanings.

Some actually leap from the dictionary, cause some rancor in the society and return to the dictionary with new senses and sometimes with another twist to their pronunciations or morphology. “Acrimony” was just there, quietly chilling in its little corner of the English dictionary before Tyler Perry stirred it up with a troublesome stick as he made it the title of his movie “Acrimony.”

Face of acrimony.

Then the world went cuckoo on that word as everyone wanted to know its dictionary meaning. Merriam Webster Dictionary made a special observation of how the lookups for the word “Acrimony” suddenly shot up in the month of March 2018. The dictionary writes, “Acrimony has periodically been among our top lookups throughout much of March 2018, especially during the hours of prime time television as high-profile advertisements for Acrimony, a new film by director Tyler Perry and starring Taraji P. Henson, have aired.”

This undoubtedly gives credence to the power of pop culture over the dictionary rusty words. Words become archaic and experience linguistic death if for a very long period of time they just sit snuggly in the dictionary without leaping to experience the actual world out there. It’s like a hand that forgets its use as a result of abandonment. Even human brain, if not put to active use, loses its keenness.

Interestingly, “Acrimony” as a word started its journey as “acer,” Latin word for keen, biting or sharp. “Acrimony” first made an entrance into English in the 16th century when it first journeyed from Middle French word “Acrimonia,” meaning “pungent or sharp.” But the Latin origin is known as the first major source.

Thanks to Tyler Perry and Traji P.Henson, for a long while now, we will remember the real face of the word “Acrimony.” Taraji is the new face of this word. If only we can always find human faces for the words that we have in our dictionaries, the meanings would not remain cold lifeless letters that describe them.

Movie inspired expressions.

Yet, “Acrimony” is not the only word in the category of words that became famous with the advent of certain movies. Another typical example in this category is the expression “Sophie’s Choice” from the title of the 1982 movie by the same title. Although the expression was first used as the title of a 1979 book, it was the movie that brought it into lime light. The expression is now found in medical literature as well as Urban Dictionary.

The meaning associated with it in these sources is not unconnected to being stuck between two equally parlous and unattractive choices. Pick one and you can never have the other. The cinematic face of this expression is Meryl Streep who went ahead to clinch the best actress at the Oscars for her role in the movie.

The Phrase “Bucket list” is now a veritable citizen of the dictionary but it was not always the case. Like we have in the case of “Sophie’s Choice” which was first of all the title of a book, “Bucket list” too was first claimed to have popped up in a novel published in 2004. We cannot exactly tell whether the novelist came by it before it was found in the screenplay written by Justin Zackham. But one thing is clear, “Bucket list” was popularized by the 2007 RobReiner’s comedy “The Bucket List.”

The expression as used in the movie is what is widely accepted and used today “the list of the things you’d love to do before you die.” But the computing world has its own different meaning for the expression. It’s a sorting system used in organizing computer items numerically or alphabetically. Some even call it a list of things which are not related. It’s easy to pick the movie angle and discard the computing sense of it. Hence, people who have not even seen the movie that brings a spot light on the expression also join in using it. Thanks to Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson who officially became the face of this expression occasioned by their roles in “The Bucket List” movie.

Humanizing the word with art.

Humanizing the words in our dictionaries through pop culture/ the arts is a sure way to save them from death and add new senses to their old usage while not also forgetting that old words can metamorphose into new words entirely. What better way to reinvent the human world!

Written by Omidire Idowu.