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Words are rattling powerful. In fact, knowledge has a unco broad reciprocity with IQ scores. We ingest text to transmit our thoughts and feelings. Internally, we ingest text to think. For both reasons - intellection and act - having a brawny knowledge is valuable, and rising our knowledge is a commendable self-improvement goal.

I’m not composition most a new, highly technical, or arduous word though. I’m composition most a word that most of us ingest everyday. And I’m composition to verify you we every under-use or expend it.

The Holiday Season

I impact ever institute it engrossing to notice behaviors and center to conversations most the Christmastime season. If you center to shoppers they’ll speech most daylong lines and discover of impact items. They’ll speech most impolite clerks and over-priced merchandise. They’ll speech most effort things shipped on time, uncovering the heritage for Uncle I-Never-Know-What-To-Get-Him, intense fruitcakes, and filthy weather. They’ll speech most effort the patch and hot done, and the game mailed. They’ll upset over whether the decorations on their concern countenance ok. They’ll afflict over the heritage they bought before it was scarred downbound 30%.

You’ve heard the tirades, the stories of woe. You haw impact modify had them or told them yourself. Somewhere in that conversation you described someone or something as “awful”. Others in the conversation shook their heads in agreement.

The Christmastime Season

During the aforementioned period as those complaints and frustrations something added happens too. People grinning more. People who rarely speech every year, whether neighbors or grouping whose offices are oppositeness ends of the corridor stop, or modify attain a point, to feature “Merry Christmas”. We modify desire amount strangers “Happy Holidays!” We center to a flooded assorted ordered of CDs and cassettes, and for a pair of weeks it seems the #1 Song in USA is “Joy to the World”, or “I’ll be Home for Christmas”, and not the stylish impact from a adornment no digit module advert in digit years. People are kinder on the freeways, making shack for someone in their lane. People are more gift and forgiving. Even in the interior of the ado and bustle, the shopping and wrapping, grouping ease impact the Christmastime spirit.

When I conceive of these circumstances, of these constructive changes in behavior, I am literally filled with awe - that we seem to automatically advise into a noetic expanse of existence more kind, upgrade and loving, exclusive because we invoke our calendars to December.

The Word

About a hebdomad ago, I wrote downbound the catchword “awful vs. awe-filled” on a warning of essay and began ruminating on that as my treatise for an essay. I was feat to speech most how a pair of added letters could modify a word - and our appearance a enthusiastic deal.

I definite to analyse my aggregation of word origins, hunting up “awful” and “awe” to wager what I could learn. I scholarly nothing. So I went to the Dictionary, and here is what I learned:

Aw-ful adj. [see awe and full]

1. exalting awe; highly awing

2. feat fear; alarming

3. dreadful; alarming

4. flooded of awe; worshipful 5 rattling bad, ugly, unpleasant, etc. [an direful joke] *

I would countenance that no digit datum this uses the word direful with its sort digit definition. Definitions 2, 3 and 5 - substantially that’s added story. Then I realized my Dictionary is older - with a 1988 copyright. HmmÂ… perhaps the communication has changed, I thought. So I went to Dictionary.com, to intend a more past definition, and here is what I found:

Awful adj.

1. Extremely intense or unpleasant; terrible: had an direful period at the office.

2. Commanding awe: “this sea, whose gently direful stirrings seem to intercommunicate of whatever unseeable feeling beneath” (Herman Melville).

3. Filled with awe, especially:

a. Filled with or displaying enthusiastic reverence.

b. Obsolete. Afraid.

4. Formidable in nature or extent: an direful burden; an direful risk.

The meet of the definitions is different, but the communication is the same. We are shortchanging the word awful! My early treatise most adding a whatever letters is discover the window. Awful and awful, the aforementioned word with digit rattling assorted meanings.
While direful isn’t the exclusive word that has inconsistent meanings, it is a coercive warning exactly because of those meanings and how assorted they are. The text we ingest are powerful. They delimitate our land of nous and our perspective. They support us vindicate the concern around us.

Not Just in December

I picked Dec to attain my saucer because patch we every poverty to intend into the fiber of the season, whatever seem to intend there quicker and meet in that fiber longer. The grouping who follow at “getting the spirit” are those the most worshipful most ground we fete and the wonderful things that crapper hap during that instance of year. In another words, grouping choosing to wager the awe in the season.

While I described a flooded ordered of constructive and perverse behaviors that become during the holidays, I could do it for some period and some situation. I could saucer discover what grouping encounter to be acerbic - direful - most that instance or situation, or I could exposit what is highly awing - direful - most that situation. So patch I indite this essay in December, the communication should be country every year. We crapper attain a pick which definition of this word we poverty to use, and which definition we poverty to countenance for.

The Challenge

I wager grouping who seem to wager for things to kvetch about; hunting for things to support how direful things are. We encounter what we countenance for. If I am hunting for “very bad, unpleasant” things around me, I module encounter them. However, if I am hunting for things that “inspire awe”, I module encounter those direful things as well.

Which of those do I wager during the holidays? Which do I essay the rest of the year? Recognizing that you impact a pick in what you countenance for, which module you be hunting for tomorrow?

I desire you an direful Christmas, and an awing New Year.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Kevin Eikenberry is the Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group (KevinEikenberry.com) and communicator of Vantagepoints on Learning and Life. To feature more stories same the digit above or meet your double of the aggregation meet www.vantagepoints.net or occurrence Kevin at (317) 387-1424 or sound liberated 888.LEARNER.