The Fickleness of Words

On Thursday we thought winter was returning.  It felt terribly cold.  The high temperature that day was only 42° and the low was a frigid 28°.  Brrrr!  Yesterday (Friday)  felt like spring with sunshine and temperatures soaring into the upper-60’s.   What a switch-up!  What a leap—cold to hot, winter to summer! The weather folk have been talking all week about the possibility of snow and sleet for today and then again on Monday and Tuesday of the coming week.  That initial forecast has been changed now.  Cold waves do alter their course.  Predictions sometimes fail to materialize.  Mother Nature is as fickle as human nature is fickle. What does fickle mean?  To be fickle is to be marked by a lack of steadfastness or constancy, or given to erratic changeableness.  While that may describe Mother Nature adequately, does it really describe our human nature?  Words are dangerous especially when used without thinking about other words (known as synonyms) which have the same or nearly the same meaning.  

Do the synonyms for the word fickle describe our nature?  To be fickle is to be unstable (unsteady, wobbly, unreliable, unbalanced, deranged, crazed, demented, distracted, troubled, disturbed, and unhinged).  That’s what fickle means—but we probably don’t want to use the word unstable to describe ourselves.  Will mercurial (sudden or unpredictable changes in mood or mind, especially for the worse:  tense, strained, uneasy, uncomfortable, charged, inflammatory, eruptive, turbulent) be any better?  No?  Well, maybe erratic would be a better fit? Erratic means inconsistent, changeable, uncertain, unsettled, undependable, fluctuating, capricious, temperamental, impulsive, wayward and flighty.  Yes, we are fickle, but…?  Let’s try on another synonym.  Perhaps vacillating would work?  To vacillate means to be dithery, indecisive, uncertain, and ambivalent.  Umm, is there some other word that might be more suitable?  How about undependable (that’s another synonym for fickle)?  To be undependable is  to be unpredictable, inconsistent, irregular, wavering, unsettled and always shifting gears.

I’ve just called myself and you (human beings) all sorts of names that are not very complimentary. Please do not take offense.  Calling people names or demeaning them seems to a popular thing to do these days.  I don’t like it and I do take offense.  I think such name-calling and other denigrating comments about persons illustrates a contempt for human life.  There is much more to our human nature than fickleness, but I wanted to make a point that parallels something Confucius said, “Where words lose their meaning, people lose their lives.”  Words really do matter and words can be fickle, especially when used by fickle people. We must be careful to understand them and  how, when, and where we use them.