Who's Your Audience

As I get older, I find more and more that I have a hard time remembering words. I'm not talking about the word "etymology;" I'm talking about words like "book." Instead of using the actual word "book," I often find myself using the word "thing" as a wild card replacement. Sometimes the word "book" eludes me and I struggle to describe the object that I am trying to convey. This got me thinking. Why is it that we can remember the word "thing" but not the word "book" when constructing sentences? It's like we have filed the word "book" on the bottom of our mind files. The word "thing," however, seems to always be accessible, like a post-it note on the surface of our cerebellum. And you know me. If I have a question, I generally pursue the answer.

As it turns out, the word "thing" is a derivative, or daughter, of the word "ting." In early Germanic societies, the word "ting" meant assembly. The word evolved, of course, to eventually mean object around the year 1300. As an assembly, a ting was the Germanic version of today's courts (although if Wikipedia has any ring of truth, it was a more violent version). This is fascinating from a linguistic standpoint but still doesn't answer my question. Perhaps "thing" was imprinted on our minds in childhood as a default in any situation—it's a lazy man's deferral. I have searched the Internet high and low with no results. I may have to consult a linguist, or perhaps a psychologist, to explain the way our minds think as we age. I could just open the floor for discussion too.

At any rate, I believe it was Shakespeare who coined the phrase "the play's the thing." In this case, though, Hamlet was referring to the fact that the play within a play called "The Murder of Gonzago" would reveal the true story of his father's death. And now we have yet another meaning for the word thing! Then again, Shakespeare was known for his word wit...which also leads me to think that the point isn't that we use the word "thing" but that the English language is ever-evolving, a language constantly in flux...and thus a survivor.

So I haven't answered my own question. A (former) friend once said of me, "you love a mystery." Indeed I do. If you generate any leads, please send them my way. I may be still pondering this question for many years to come.