THEY LIKE OUR WORDS, ANYWAY
Comments(0) The de-churched culture isn’t beyond using our words as though they owned them. One might sit listening to talk shows, read newspapers and magazines, or just eavesdrop on conversations in restaurants, and hear a variety of church-y words employed. Ofttimes I imagine the user has absolutely no awareness of the ecclesiatical roots of the high-sounding, sonorous embellishments to his spiel. Warning: don’t eavesdrop on teenagers …if you value your peace of mind!
The academic sphere may be where one finds the richest stash of our purloined verbiage. The traditional graduation music, the medieval architecture and trappings, the Latin inscriptions and mottoes to which most of the habituees of the halls of academe can attatch a meaning, while being otherwise unable to negotiate the lingua mortua.
In the everyday world, we encounter halo, caroling, Gothic, heavenly, divine, cell, diabolical, hierarchy, enough already! I have an inkling that someone has previously compiled a massive, marvelous list along this line, a list of which I’m unaware.
