If a dictionary defines words, what does a thesaurus do? The word means treasury in Latin, and the basic answer, of course, is that a thesaurus synonymizes, that is, it suggests words close in meaning to one another. Some thesauri merely list groups of related words, others discern the subtle shades of meaning between them. It’s the latter we want as writers. If the high achievement of composition is clarity, then finding the right word for the right place in a sentence is an inherent part of writing precisely. Or is it an intrinsic part? Let’s produce our own synonymy for a moment to develop our critical eye.
Something which is inherent is a permanent element of something else, but something which is intrinsic is so inherent that it makes up the very nature of that which it is a part. The etymology can help us see the difference: inherent derives from a Latin verb meaning to cling, and intrinsic derives from the Latin adverb intra, meaning within. We speak of the inherent goodness of human nature, but of the intrinsic radiance of the sun: one may not be good despite one’s human nature, but the sun cannot but always be radiant to be the sun. Both adjectives are related to the more general term essential, and right there—the fact that essential is more general in meaning—is why that word would have made the lesser choice in pointing to the part precision plays in writing clearly. But did my sentence mean that finding the right word was a permanent feature of writing clearly, or did it mean even more than that: that such precision was of the very nature of writing itself? Perhaps the latter would have been a step too far unless I had confined my definition of writing to expository prose. For what of the suggestive heart of poetry?
There is always the danger, certainly, that we chop the logic so fine in finding the variances among words that we end up with little more than a page of linguistic tatter, making distinctions without a difference, or worse, bandying with words for the pointlessness of it. What guards against these faults is the belief in truth, the conviction that what we are articulating corresponds to the truth as we see it, not to the specious as we spin it. And with the conviction of truth comes the imperative to make it known as it is as precisely as we can. As Aristotle said, we humans desire in our very nature to know.
We have our life, however, in a world of appearances, and the universal medium we use to understand that world, language, can be intrinsically ambiguous. The writer’s proper but heavy burden to be precise, as a result, is often transferred to us as listeners and readers to do the hard work of thinking. And prosaic examples abound. What, for example, does this sentence mean: Since the city removed all the parking meters from the central commercial district, business has improved dramatically. Certainly we will say that because the city removed the meters, business has improved, but certainly does not mean solely. The subordinating conjunction since can be used not only causally but temporally as well: from the time the city removed the meters, business has improved—the cause of which might have been an aggressive advertising campaign, lower inflation, higher consumer confidence. Cause and time are different relations between things which must be kept distinct.
And that is not an unindifferent conclusion. Unindifferent? Another synonymy presents itself, this one to exercise our critical skills too. To differ means to draw apart, to notice the way in which one thing is not another of its kind. To be indifferent, then, (the prefix in– often, but not always, means not) is to be impartial, unbiased, not noticing anything which would distinguish one thing from another. And so to be unindifferent is not to be impartial, which is, through the double negative, to be partial, which is what I am saying is not the case in maintaining that cause is one thing and time another. Thus we should beware of too much negativity.
If we cannot distinguish between truth and appearance, it is in the very nature of things that unrest will arise, within us and among us. And that is why so much emphasis has traditionally—anciently—been put on the study of language. Words fasten things down for a moment and help us get our bearings in the world. They constitute, though, a double-edged sword, because trying to hold down life cannot be done. Still, as the philosopher and teacher Richard Weaver said in his essential Language is Sermonic, “the word is a sort of deliverance from the shifting world of appearances,” and it seems that an intrinsic part of our need to know is to know stability amidst all that worldly change as well.
***
Unrest will arise!