What's In A Word?

There are words and phrases in mid-stream American culture that cause emotional responses in both the sender and receiver, but it would be difficult to find a word that evokes more emotional response than "old" to those of us 35 and older. (Unless, of course, you are talking to an antique dealer.) This response isn't caused so much by the dictionary definition of old, which is "not new, having lived for a very long time."

Now, I could take issue with what "a very long time" means before someone or something is considered to be old. A person's perspective has a lot to do with what would be considered to be "not new" any longer, or what "a very long time" would be. The younger a person is, the less use or number of years something or someone has to have to be considered old. Shoot, as soon as my teens take the cellophane off a CD, it becomes old! Let's look at the synonyms for the word old: moth-eaten, stale, previous, secondhand, doddering, used--these are just a handful. Notice that the connotations for these words are generally negative. These are words used to describe things we no longer want, things that are less than desirable. When the word old is applied to people, imagine why that person reacts as if struck with a stick. To be old is to be useless, obsolete. Who would want to be either of those things? Don't they represent some of an adult's greatest fears?

It seems there is no term for that last semester of life that is particularly positive or kindly. The term senior citizen doesn't seem to be much more popular with older adults than the word old. "Seasoned" has been used with some success, but has never been popularized. In my previous work, we most frequently used the term "older adult" for our 60+ clients as the least offensive method of referring to them as a group. In "Good Daughters" by Patricia Beard, there is a discussion about the issue of how to refer to people of extended years between the author and her 85 year old mother. Two of the terms I thought were apt and positive were "long-living" and "late life."

Truthfully, the words aren't as important as the meaning behind them, the connotations, the body language, the inferences. If what is said is said respectfully, the words matter little. As a culture, we need to be more mindful of the effects of words, and remember that it won't be all that long that those words will be used to describe not only our parents and grandparents, but us as well.

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