Back in my college days, I took a course in semantics. One of the more revelatory learnings I acquired from that course’s professor was the power of function words: all the “stuff” which fills in among the supposedly more robust verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Presented with a paragraph of all those “important” words and no function words, it’s hard to make sense of it. Just a pile of verbiage, really. On the other hand, a paragraph of nothing except function words instantly, in your mind’s eye, acquires all the strength of an understandable structure — like a skyscraper’s underlying girders — because the function words define the relationships among words.
A classic example* is the first stanza of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” as seen here with the function (and other “null”) words dimmed out:
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome rath outgrabe.
…and here, with the function words emphasized:
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome rath outgrabe.
A few weeks ago, agent Nathan Bransford posted two open-ended questions on his blog, a week apart: “What’s Your Favorite Word?” and “What’s Your Least Favorite Word?” I can’t swear to this, yet I believe every single nominee in both categories — including my own — was an “important” word. Let’s take all those commenters at their (ahem) word, and assume those are their favorites and least favorites.
Per the title of this post here, though, what’s the single most amazing word in the English language — the word whose weight is out of all proportion to its size and apparent significance? I bet it’s a function word. Here’s my nominee:
