Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dr. Joel M. Hoffman" <joel AT exc.com>]

>"A person whose liking for chocolate is jestingly likened to the
>alcoholic's addictive craving for alcohol."
>
>Context, as I keep telling Vadim, is everything.

Thank you.

This seemingly off-topic disucssion of what "chocoholic" means is
actually quite instructive.  Living in an English-speaking country I
know that when native English speakers say "chocoholic" they mean
"someone who really likes chocolate."  I know that they *do* *not*
mean "someone who is addicted to chocolate."

This agreed-upon usage of a word is what I refer to as "meaning," and
it is this information about English that lets me understand what
someone writing or speaking in English is trying to convey.

Finding a Wikipedia entry that doesn't match how people use the word
is not helpful.  Deducing what the word doesn't mean from similar
words is not helpful.  Declaring that everyone who uses the word is
using it wrong is, IMO, not helpful.  None of these help one
understand what English speakers are saying.

The same reasoning applies to ancient Hebrew.  I want to know what
those ancient words meant.

I wonder how the many people here whose approaches have led them
astray regarding a common modern English word will have any chance of
figuring out what ancient Hebrew words mean.  Similarly, those who
claim that the English spakers are doing it wrong and misusing
"chocoholic" will end up with the conclusion that the ancient Hebrew
authors were doing it wrong, and misusing Hebrew.  If so (though I
disagree), wouldn't it be nice to know what those authors did mean,
rather than what they unwittingly wrote in some artificial
prescriptive Hebrew dialect?

As with most things (!), Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty (who paid his
words extra when they had to work harder) said it best:

      `When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful
      tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more
      nor less.'

      `The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean
      so many different things.'

      `The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master
      --- that's all.'

-Joel Hoffman
 http://www.exc.com/JoelHoffman