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DW -> RE: The Good The Bad & The Indifferent (7/1/2016 9:47:26 AM)
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I noticed many years ago that once I learned a new word, I suddenly started hearing it being used with a fair degree of regularity.
I recall that "neophyte" was one such word.
I first heard it while watching a movie where it was really emphasized. I didn't know what it meant so I looked it up. After that I started hearing it... I wouldn't say commonly, but often enough that it shouldn't have been unfamiliar to me.
After that had happened a half-dozen times or so, it got me to wondering what was going on.
New words do sometimes burst onto our collective consciousness and quickly become ubiquitous, like all of the new words associated with the computer revolution, for example. But, the words I was discovering back then weren't of that sort, and that they were being used so often, after I became aware of them, I couldn't believe that I was actually hearing them for the first time.
That led me to believe that the words in question were being used all along, but because I didn't know what they meant my brain was somehow skipping over them, with no awareness on my part that I had missed something. Then, when something out of the ordinary finally brought such a word to my attention, like the movie that emphasized "Neophyte", and I learned the word's meaning, my brain then stopped skipping over it.
I've often wondered how much nuance I missed over the years due to that, if that's indeed what's going on.
It's a bit of a catch 22. If I don't notice unfamiliar words until something out of the ordinary brings them to my attention, how do I know I'm missing something?
It doesn't seem to happen much these days, but I don't know if that's due to my broader vocabulary or if I'm still skipping over unfamiliar words, but due to my slowly increasing decrepitude, it's more difficult for me to finally become aware of them.
The brain is a weird thing sometimes.
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