Wonderful!!!

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I find that ‘wonderful’ is the most debased word in the English language.

I am no linguist, but it seems to me the ultimate buzz-word: a ‘thought-substitute’.

When an American says “Wonderful”, with one or more exclamation marks following it, I have found that he (she) means:

“I don’t have the time or inclination to look into it, but I don’t want to hurt you; I wish to be polite, agreeable, and keep you in good humor, for I ‘guess’ you will be useful and profitable to me by and by”.

See, how much punch a good buzz-word can pack into it.

I learned this by my ‘wonderful’ experience of collaborating with an MIT don over 25 years. When he discovered that what I had to say was turning out to be really useful and profitable to him, he stopped using “wonderful” and replaced it by thoughtful words like: “incisive, original, beautiful, ugly, shoddy, plain wrong, or bullshit” as the case maybe (another buzz-phrase).

I am pained at this dilution of a really keen expression. All of us recall the ‘wonders’ our childhood filled us with: the first circus, train journey, movie, zoo, seashore, comet and the first surge of unfamiliar hormones. But age is no bar for experiencing the wonders that surround us. The day we stop sensing the wonders of this world, we cease enjoying Life.

The dozen or so ‘Suktas’ of the Vedas are the first known expressions of ‘wonderment’. To the rishis who composed them Nature around them appears simply wonderful: the trees, the forest, the streams, the sunrise and sunset, the clouds, the moon, the stars, the rivers, the seas, the mountains, the animals; each of which so filled them with wonder that they personified them into gods and worshipped them, invoked them, feared them and composed marvelous hymns at them.

Much like the Thanksgiving of the early Pilgrim Fathers of America (who however decimated their Red Indian Natives, who were no less wonderful by themselves).

The debasement of this word is not new. More than 80 years ago, Thurber rebels against it. I quote:

“Wonderful place you have here”, said the man from the newspaper. He stood with his host on a rise of ground from where down a slope to the right, they could see a dead garden, killed by winter, and, off to the left, spare, grim trees stalking the ghost of a brook.

“Everybody says that,” said George Lockhorn……”I say that you and the others are, by God, debasing the word wonderful. This bleak prospect is no more wonderful than a frozen shirt. Even in full summer it is no more wonderful than an unfrozen shirt….I have known only a few wonderful things in my fifty eight years: the body of a woman, the works of a watch, the verses of Keats, the structure of the hyacinth and the devotion of the dog…”

Each of us have our own list. Or should make one before it is too late.

To me the brain of Feynman, as I know it from his writings, is one of the most wonderful things. For he wrote this wonderful stanza:

“I wonder why, I wonder why.
I wonder why I wonder.
I wonder why I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder!”

A true teaser on ourselves and the world we happen to live in.

There is another buzz-word; this invented by an American genius: “OK”

About this great word, another time!
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