When I was little, my siblings and I used to play a game called ‘The dictionary’. The rules were easy. Someone picked a word, quite a complicated one, and wrote down its official meaning on a piece of paper. The rest of us had to compose a definition for the same word, but without the help of the dictionary. All the proposals, along with the real one, were read out loud, and each one of us voted for what we thought it was the genuine one. The winner definition it was the one that gathered more reliability, usually never the one from the dictionary.
Sometimes proper nouns were also included in the game and some of us came up with quite convincing lines. “Viriato: Lusitanian priest. Humble but high-minded man. He led an army of a hundred thousand warriors and fought against Rome, forcing it to pact.” But most of the times our definitions were completely made up, nothing to do with the real meaning, not even a single common trace. What a genius exercise of practical democracy, what an ironic game we played.
Today, so many years after, I’ve recalled ‘The dictionary’ while reading one of the acceptations of ‘respect’ according to the Royal Spanish Academy. “Excessive regard towards the view of men, prepended to the dictates of strict morality”. I wondered if our noble academics also knew about that game. No definition found accomplishing my standards. I search for that word in Merriam Webster next. “Respect/Transitive verb/To refrain from interfering with/First Known Use: 1560.” I go to Wikipedia and end up in a category named ‘Gestures of respect.’ Let me see... Japanese bowing, foot washing… oh! Roman salutation! A few paragraphs below, a picture of Mussolini and his German friend. Headline on the left: “20th Century adoption by Fascists.” I quit my internet search. I open a blank document. I write what you have just read.
