The Thing and the Thingy

 Yesterday we were getting ready for a walk. Dorothy was taking a little longer than usual. She explained her problem as follows; "The thing won't go in the thingy." She has a new pair of sunglasses complete with a nifty cord for hanging around her neck. The cord needed to be attached to the glasses. She was having the same problem we all have when concentrating on an unfamiliar task. Words failed. What followed was a moment of discussion and fiddling, after which we were able to attach the thing to the thingy. Then we went for a walk in the sunshine. Thingy: a successful word.

I write because it's fun making words succeed. So I'll give it a try. Dorothy didn't know what to call the thing or the thingy. Neither did I until later when I spent five minutes searching web pages for the structure of eyeglasses. She meant to say that she couldn't attach the clips on the cord to the temple tips of the sunglasses. Temple tips is not a name that springs to mind for the bits that go over your ears, but that's what they're called by those who know eyeglasses.

For a word to succeed, its meaning must be clear to both the speaker and the listener. Sometimes that doesn't happen, which is why we need dictionaries, encyclopedias, authors, teachers, story tellers, search engines, and answers to questions. 

Temple tips: the ends of the supports that extend from the rim past the temples and over the ears.
Temple tips: contributions to help the less fortunate may be left in the box at the door.
Temple tips: On the good ship Lollipop, it's a sweet trip to a candy shop... if you eat too much, ooh ooh, you'll awake with a tummy ache.

Matching perceived meaning to intended meaning often fails because we didn't study optometry or visit a certain place of worship or see a particular movie. Secondary sources may actually misdirect with the result that the question "what do you mean" never gets asked. As a result, speaker and listener are thinking about different things even when we use the same words. Thingy is a good denotation because it leaves us with a question in search of a right answer rather than confidence in a wrong answer. 

I am trying once again to show the ability of empty words to open one's mind in search of intended meaning. This is my perennial theological screed, that God is an empty word which remains virtually empty even when loaded with all our attempts at definition. It's function is to keep us seeking. If it fails in that, the accepted meaning becomes a misdirection leading us away from better comprehension. God is to be found in the questions, however enlightening we may find particular answers.

Epilog
It was colder on the walk today. Dorothy put on a thingamagooj to cover her ears. The thing got stuck in the thingamagooj. Since you ask, the cord of her sunglasses got tangled in the headband. It seems that the thing will have to be detached from the thingy until spring. There is always more to be said, if you get my meaning.