Brenda’s Blog – December 15, 2015
“Speedo Repair”…
The reader board caught my eye as I traveled through Dallas. I could see the small Speedometer store on the side of the interstate, but it didn’t interest me until… I saw their brief notice.
What do you think? Was that cryptic offer to rejuvenate out of kilter speedometers? Was that a humorous double entendre crafted to get attention?
The way we talk has influence and impact. We recognize accents, styles, and word choices. We make value judgments based on the vocabulary, articulation, and expressions.
When I was young my parents taught me swearing was lazy. When someone had to resort to improper speech, and vulgarities it was because of a lack in vocabulary options. As I got older and spent time with well-educated men and women, I realized coarse speech was more than lazy – it was habitual.
Precision in speech always gets my attention. The gift of having access to exactly the right word in the right place garners admiration. One of the sadnesses of older age is the evaporation of words. I know I used to know, but now I grasp for the proper word, usually settling for the lowest common denominator.
The Bible tells us our speech has the power to heal or to hurt. In Proverbs we are told the extreme quality of “an apt word.” The picture drawn is of “apples of gold in settings of silver.” That puts encouraging words in rarified air, doesn’t it?
Words are the way we connect ideas to action. Words are the bridges from one to another. Words matter.