Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.
--Robert Frost, "Death of a Hired Man"
Pick a word, any word -- "it" for instance. Such a simply word as IT was ko in Indo-European, with a variant ki, the indispensable stem of a pronoun meaning, generally, "this." From this root came Germanic hi, evolving into Old English as hit, IT, HE, HIM and HIS. In fact, the ke in ke-etero, "this remain," appears to be the origin of ET CETERA.—Lewis Thomas, ET CETERA, ET CETERA, Notes of a Word-Watcher, NY: Penguin, 1990.
Pick a word, any word (or nearly any word!). Find five different definitions of the word. To find the definitions you will have to use more than one dictionary. Go to the library and use as many dictionaries as necessary. Ask for help if necessary. Ask people what they think the word means. There are also personal definitions, what words mean to you. There are also illusionary definitions, what words are supposed to mean but rarely do. Words such as "education," "democracy," "love," "family," "marriage," often have illusionary meanings, meanings that are in reality often very different from what we have been taught they are.
A definition also involves a classification. To define is also to separate what you are defining from everything else. Some classifications seem strange, but a good definition works.
What might you define? Think of the most common words whose meanings have changed drastically during your lifetime. "Many of the most basic concepts we use to construct a sense of self or the design of a life have changed their meanings: Work. Home. Love. Commitment," says a noted educator Mary Bateson (Composing a Life, NY: Plume, 1990). Have the meanings of any of these terms changed in your life?
This essay is an opportunity for you to examine the meaning of some basic ideas that you live by. You first find the common, accepted meaning, the meaning found in a dictionary. Does this meaning correspond to what you think the word means? For example, look at the definition of "home" in the poem by Robert Frost. This is Frost's definition as expressed by the character in his poem. You won't find this definition in the dictionary, but I think you'll agree that this definition gets to the heart of what "home" means.
Here is another example. Take the word "patriotism." Many people might define the word as "willing to go to war for your country" or perhaps even "willing to die for your country." Images of young men going off to war are commonly associated with the word. But look at the common definition as expressed in the dictionary. The dictionary defines a patriot as "one who loves his country and zealously guards its welfare." A good friend of mine was arrested many times and even put into prison for years for opposing U.S. wars against countries in Central America. Those who knew him well considered him a patriot because he was acting out of love of his country. Your essay will be more interesting if your personal definition is not the one that most people hold but is still one that corresponds to the definition as expressed in a good (unabridged) dictionary.
Look also in a book of word origins, books such as the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology and the Oxford English Dictionary. Here you will find relationships between words that might lead you to write an essay that is interesting because you make connections that few people have ever thought of before. For example, if you look at the many definitions of the word "holy," you will find that one meaning is "silly." It makes sense when you think that if people really live their religious beliefs they would look silly to us. For instance, Christ's Sermon on the Mount expresses love of one's enemy. How many people do that? Christ said "not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" but Love is the response to injury. If someone hits you and you "turn the other cheek" would that not look silly to most people?
Dictionaries are great sources for ideas and also for ways to make those ideas interesting to the reader. When you write your essay, you don't necessarily have to include the dictionary definition in your essay, but it should be the starting point for what you write as you explore and explain your own definition of whatever word you choose.
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