I recently came across the word “landholder,” an indigenous term for tree. How magical! An expression that speaks in the tongue of the thing itself. How can we reshape our daily language to reflect that notion, to get us out of our word silos?
It strikes me that maintaining the diversity of language guards the health of what the word names, sustains what the word is the noun of, the action of, the description of, and thereby, keeps all things cherished, alive, thriving in fact and in real time. If so, wouldn’t it be incumbent on us all to sustain, reinvigorate, and refresh language that has “the quivering intensity of an arrow thudding into a tree,” as author J.A. Baker said? How much time do any of us spend thinking about the origin, sound, color, beauty, meaning and power of words…never mind reckoning with what the loss of words might portend about our capacity for relationship to place and one another?
A decade ago, English educators, environmentalists and authors vehemently protested the many words associated with nature eliminated from a revised edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Almond, blackberry and crocus made way for analogue, block graph and celebrity. Catkin, cauliflower, chestnut and clover were bumped for cut and paste and broadband. Just watch, AI will be next to elbow its way in, in lieu of, I don’t know, sunrise? Among the protesters was British author Robert Macfarlane. “We do not care for what we do not know, and on the whole, we do not know what we cannot name.” Their letter to the Oxford University Press pointed out the proven connection between “the decline in natural play and the decline in children’s wellbeing. Obesity, anti-social behavior, friendlessness and fear are the known consequences.”
I’d venture to say the diminishment of language isn’t good for anyone’s health, regardless of age. However, when we frequent places new to us, or where Nature is the biggest deal, it’s there we get to the origins and orisons of language. If young and old get out and about, we’re inspired to find the colorful words for what we experience, see, hear, smell. But if we don’t, the palette of language and our lived experience will become monochromatic.
“We do not care for what we do not know, and on the whole, we do not know what we cannot name.” Robert Macfarlane
In this high desert, as tragic as losing the soft, conversational chuk-chuk of the sage grouse or the plaintive howl of the wolf would be, so too would be losing sight of a world where black is toohoo, sun is taba and field mouse is poongatse. The Paiute world. Or the world of buckaroos (from the Spanish “vacquero”) twirling their lariats (“la reata”), recalling the “cavvy” of horses gathered that morning, using a domesticated “prather” horse, also called a Judas horse, to lead the wild horses (referred to as broomtails, fuzztails, or mustangs) into a corral. Or what about the rich language of the logger (whistlepunk, strawline, snoose, peavey, hashers, donkey puncher, bucker and bull cook)? Or the millworker (band saw, blue stain, boxed heart, flitch, scant, shook, wane)?
In a book called After Liff, British TV producer John Lloyd and author Jon Canter gathered British place names that, over time, had come to be used as nouns for, as Lloyd says, “the hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no words exist.” Some examples: Duddo (a village in Northumberland) means, “The most deformed potato in any given collection of potatoes.” The verb Harbledown (a village near Canterbury): “to maneuver a double mattress down a winding staircase.”And from Dorset: “Kimmeridge, the light breeze that blows through your armpit hair when you are sunbathing.”
Saying words out loud resuscitates them, reintroduces them to our lexicon. When we lose diversity of language, which, after all, is our primary currency as humans, it is a loss of experience, a diminishment of imagination and shared humanity. Wendell Berry said, “People exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love, and to defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.”
The removal of four dams on the Klamath River was completed on Oct. 3, 2024. That same month, adult fall Chinook salmon made it all the way to Oregon’s stretch of the Klamath Basin for the first time in more than a century, swimming 300 miles from the Pacific Ocean. I believe the Klamath River tribes’ commitment to keeping alive their words for salmon, for river, for rapids, played a critical, if figurative, role in the demolition of the dams. At the very least, these words are resurrected and renewed along with the free-flowing river and can return with the salmon to spawn in a restored homeland.
This article appears in the Source August 28, 2025.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
O, how I cherish this fine weaving of thought and tongue—thy essay on the birth of words and their slow undoing in this age of flickering screens. It is a balm to the spirit, a lantern in the dimness. With heart full, I thank thee for kindling my morn with such reverie.
Amidst the din of digit and the trance of glowing glass—yea, even my own kin held captive—I oft find myself adrift, a lone watcher in a sea of scrolling thumbs. But thy words—rich with the marrow of meaning—lift me. They summon hope where once there was only ache.
Thou hast reminded me that language lives still, if only we dare to speak it.
What a beautiful article to read. Thank you 😊