Words and what they mean.

The definition of a word is a unit of language that native speakers can identify; “words are
the blocks from which sentences are made”

Words are the way in which we communicate with each other, without words it would be
very hard to achieve what we want to do as we would have to explain this by using a different
method of communication such as gesturing. When we are young we are taught words and
linking them to what they mean, we soak up the words that are taught to us by our parents
and others around us. The bank of words that we know is called our vocabulary, our
vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful tool for
communicating and acquiring knowledge. Words can be expressed differently for example in
different languages, two words can be completely different but mean the same thing, it’s just
in a different language. We can put different meanings to a word also by the way in which we
say it, we can alter the pitch and tone of our voices to determine in which way we mean it.
Words can also be sung to music; these words are called lyrics and usually have a meaning to
them.

Without words there would be no explanation for anything, nothing would have a meaning
and the evolution of mankind would have gone a lot slower. A lot of history would have been
forgotten if it wasn’t for words, we wouldn’t be able to write what had happened for future
generations to know what went on before they were born. There are various ways that words
are made up, they can be all letters or else they may have apostrophies, and what apostrophies
are more commonly seen in are words meaning a plural of something. Different languages
have different characters to make up the words like in Irish language (Gaelic) most of the
words have fada’s in them. Most of our words are in the dictionary, but we also have what is
called “slang” which not always will be included in it. Slang is defined as “A kind of
language occurring chiefly in casual and playful speech, made up typically of short-lived
coinages and figures of speech that are deliberately used in place of standard terms for added
raciness, humour, irreverence, or other effect.” We use slang in our everyday life, and
different parts of the world have different slang, it is usually used most in the area it
originated. English and American words are mostly the same but some spellings differ, the
American spelling is color and English spelling is colour.
If we didn’t have words we wouldn’t be able to explain our feelings to one another, for
instance if we were sick and went to the doctor we wouldn’t be able to tell them what was
wrong with us and it would be very hard for them to diagnose our problems.

To conclude, the meaning of words is that they are the explanation for everything and our
main method of communication, the world would be a lot different if we hadn’t got words to
communicate with each other.