Are words without meaning words at all?

A koan is a thought or concept which may not be apprehended rationally but may be grasped on an intuitive basis. The Buddhists use them for meditation. Have you heard the old chestnut about "the sound of one hand, clapping"? That's a koan. Your observation about words without meaning brought the idea of a koan to mind. Surely, a word which has no meaning is not a word, is it? It would just be a collection of letters, would it not? The thing that gives a word existence, as a word is meaning. Rationally, without meaning, words are just sounds and symbols, are they not? Is "qwert" really a word? And yet... We all know what a "Qwerty" keyboard is, as distinguished from a Dvorak keyboard, and intuition informs us that we all are aware of encountering nonsense "words" which hold place in our literature, music, and poetry and yet which have no actual meaning, don't we. "Higglety-piggelty," "brillig," and "vorpal" come to mind, as well as "fiddle-dee-dee" and "de do do do, de da da da".

Edited at 2009-02-12 08:49 am (UTC)

Ahem! Scrounging up best old-guy-Chinese Kung-fu master voice:
Excellent, Grasshopper! Indeed, context trumps meaning, for context can warp the dictionary meaning of a word into its own dictionary antonym, if the writer uses it carefully. I stand corrected.

Burke says that words are "symbolic action.' They really only derive meaning from their "context" and then, of course, the context and meaning that you as the reader bring to them. That is why meaning and interpretation are so subjective and up for grabs. I guess I was trying to play here with the concept that words and meaning and people die together-- because the context is completely changed when the breath is extinguished.

Did you write this? It's very good.

Yes. I wrote it this afternoon. Just trying to process the death of a poet...still...

oh so sad. i am still processing too. i am glad you are writing tho, it is healing and this is beautifully written.