Today I was wondering a lot of things, but mostly I was thinking about how things got named. Some of the names of things don’t sound right to me because I think they sound different than what they’re describing.
For example, take arms and legs. Say the word arm first, and then say the word leg. Doesn’t it sound like an arm needs to be long and a leg needs to be short? Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm. Leg. See what I mean?
How about head and feet? Head sounds big and clunky, like it should be too much heaviness for your neck to hold up and feet makes me think of arms because it feels like what feet are, they should be superly long. Feeeeeeeeeeeeet. Head.
Buttocks sounds right because it sounds like what your butt should sound like. Think about sitting down hard on a bench and all of a sudden, buttocks sounds right.
Fingers and toes sound right because fingers sound long and toes sound short and when you look at your hands and feet, your fingers are long and your toes are short. That’s probably why more people break toes than fingers because short toes get stubbed and when’s the last time you heard someone say they stubbed their finger? I think probably never.
But hands doesn’t sound right because that sounds like the word is describing something that has feathers on it or maybe that look like butterfly wings except the word only sounds like one flap and not a bunch of flaps.
Hold your hands up in front of you and say the word hand. Let your hand imitate the word and voila — a flap like a butterfly or bird wing. Humans don’t get born with wings, so why does the word hand sound like they are?
How about eyes and eyebrows? Eyes sound like quick dots that got put on your face and eyebrows sound like superly long lines that got drawn on with a permanent black marker.
Imagine what people would really look like if their body parts matched the sound of their body parts. Wouldn’t people look superly funny? I think so. Do you?
My big brother Aaron says I need more chores if I have time to think about things like that but I think I have just enough chores because that’s mostly when I start wondering about things like that.
Do you know any words that you think don’t sound right for what they’re supposed to be describing? If you do, you can add them in the comments below and explain why you think that way about the word or words, or you can talk about it with me and my friends and fans on my Facebook page.
