In high school I became obsessed with the concept of the definition essay. Blame the SAT prep we were constantly doing in English class, I suppose. Between begrudgingly scribbling out five-paragraph essays with absolutely no effort put into them, I started taking some word that I wanted to vibe with and just tried to not only break down the definition of it that I’d look up in Merriam Webster Online, but also figure out what that word meant to be.

One of the first words I recall trying to write a definition essay for was Recrudescence. It sort of turned into a poem that wasn’t particularly good. ‘Recrudescence’ is more than just a fancy word for renewal or the coming of spring, though, as I naively took it to mean at the time. The more specific Merriam Webster definition is ‘a new outbreak after a period of abatement or inactivity.’ Interestingly enough, as I write this, I haven’t seriously sat down to write an essay in quite some time. Everything I’ve been sharing online recently is a rehash or rewrite of something old. The words simply haven’t been coming to me. 

So, this very essay, entitled ‘Definition’ is in fact, a recrudescence of sorts. It’s an outbreak of words spilling onto the page, or as I once naively believed, an outbreak of new possibilities and chances to shine. Well, I did just fine on my SATs and got into college; but let’s just say I had my chances during those four miserable ‘higher education’ years, and I didn’t end up shining. I’d write a good essay here and there; my research papers in my first couple years of college got some praise. But I wasn’t really learning anything. 

And while the definition essay really became more of a pet project of mine, it still felt like in every thing that I wrote, I was trying to define myself as a writer and as a human being. But I still didn’t really understand what most of the words I was writing even meant to me, never mind anyone else. And you may ask where many of those early definition essays wound up. They ended up in a shredder. They weren’t very good. They were just vocabulary practice, after all. 

According to Merriam Webster, the word ‘definition’ itself has four meanings, a couple of which can be broken down into further distinctions. I think it’s rather important that if we are going to discuss the folly of my early definition essays — which primarily ended up oversimplifying the words I chose into “vocab” words that I felt would make me sound smarter — we need to define ‘definition’ first. 

The first definition of ‘definition’ provided by Merriam Webster is as follows: “a statement of the meaning of a word or word group or a sign or symbol.” That’s fairly dry. Under the same first subheading we have two more possible meanings: “a statement expressing the essential nature of something” or a “product of defining.” Well, words are by their very nature symbols we use for communicative purposes, but very few words on their own express the essential nature of any one particular thing. They are at best decent approximations. It’s then rather funny that definitions by themselves being a product of defining become statements of their own nature, which may or may not be essential.

But before we go down that existential rabbit hole, let’s consider the second subheading of ‘definition’ which is “the action or process of stating the meaning of a word or word group.” That is, in effect, reading the dictionary aloud. It’s a very direct meaning of ‘definition.’ 

The third subheading of ‘definition’ has three distinct meanings. The first: “the action or the power of describing, explaining, or making definite and clear.” So, the definition essay is pretty much the meaning here; clearly expressing how that word is commonly understood and what different contexts can mean in reshaping how we define that particular word. Definition can also mean ‘clarity of visual presentation : distinctness of outline or detail,’ which I feel is a much more modern use of the word; high definition is the most common example of this particular word usage. Then we have ‘sharp demarcation of outlines or limits.’ 

Now this last distinction gives me some pause; can this mean that definitions, by their very nature, create a sharp demarcation of outlines or limits of the ideas they can express by themselves? It would seem, just by the very existence of so many different contextual meanings outlined in the dictionary, this definition is itself sort of a contradiction in and of itself. Those demarcations of outlines or limits are, in many cases, completely arbitrary. So, then, definitions in and of themselves are entirely arbitrary because language itself is entirely arbitrary! Why even bother with definitions at all? Well, these outlines or limits allow us to contain ideas that would otherwise be inexpressible. So, even arbitrary symbols like words and their associated definitions do, indeed, have some practical real value.

The final definition of ‘definition’ currently on Merriam Webster is ‘an act of determining’ which is more appropriately assigned to the adjective form ‘definitional’ but this usage is specific to ‘the formal proclamation of a Roman Catholic dogma.’ That particular context perhaps deserves its own essay, and I’m not chasing the Easter bunny down that rabbit hole just yet. Not in this essay, at least.

So, it would seem that a definition essay, one in which each available widely understood meaning is broken down and explored, is a very useful exercise for someone who dives deep into analyzing primary resources and literature. It’s rather fascinating to research etymologies and archaic usages, too. But I’m not really a linguist who wants to get bogged down in the weeds of how words used to be used, because right now, that’s not a line of study that fascinates me. It did at some point in my late teens and early twenties, and I’ve dabbled in etymology occasionally throughout adulthood. 

But what I failed to do instead, which was a much more pressing matter, was to define myself to myself. I’ve rarely had a clearly defined list of goals and reasons for being. I sort of just copy and pasted what seemed to work for other people, and of course, none of that worked out for me.

Now in my late thirties, after a rollercoaster decade of many more lows than highs, I’m feeling forced to recalibrate. But in order to recalibrate, I need some reference point with which to calibrate so I stop drifting off course into melancholy-fueled wasted days one after the other. I keep starting projects that go nowhere and end up folded into my journals as just more failed attempts at seeking my defining moment in literature. I’ve self-published a few books. None went anywhere, because frankly I didn’t promote them. I just published them to say I did it, to put something of some permanence into existence, since I’m always rewriting my essays, even the published ones. 

That’s because for me, definitions aren’t static. How I feel about a particular combination of words can radically change for me one day to the next. Some things stay the same. I still like some things I’ve written, to a point where I’m surprised I was ever in a particular frame of mind to have crafted prose or verse in some way that I later find astonishing. And really, even dictionary definitions aren’t static. They shift in usage and meaning over the course of decades, and in common vernacular, even moreso. Context is always changing in unforeseen and drastic ways, and I’ve learned that context, at the end of the day, is more valuable than burying your nose in a dictionary to better understand what that word might mean to you, and only you, as you’re reading it.

But it seems in order to recalibrate, I need to return to this sort of definition essay style of writing. It seems to come rather naturally to me, for whatever reason, although the quality of this output seems infinitely superior to my teenage ramblings trying to sound smart by quoting the dictionary and providing entirely hollow and unserious “analysis.” Now I’m just content to say, here’s what the dictionary says, and here’s what I have to say about it, just whatever comes off the top of my head and ends up being expressed through my fingertips on the laptop keys, or swiping on my phone, or whatever medium I decide to use to write these up. I still don’t trust Voice to Text, not just yet.

I also came to this realization that one-word essay titles may be a good minimalist strategy to help me focus better. All those years of writing to appease search engines destroyed my appreciation for short, snappy titles. One word should be sufficient to build my essay around, right? Especially one as richly meaningful as ‘definition!’ Ironically, the way I choose these titles going forward will be a sort of ‘keyword strategy’ reminiscent of my search engine optimization specialist days. There may be a few two word titles in this Recalibrate series, but I’ll probably cheat with hyphenated or compounded monstrosities of which there are more than you might think in the English language. Also, I might dip into German, which has so many compound words that this series could have practically infinite possibilities!

The other important part of this series is that there is absolutely no plan to how these are going to begin or end, other than taking some random thought that seems worthy of expansion and tying it to some word I can look up and riff on for a while. Hopefully, you will find these explorations of the English language as useful as I find them amusing, although perhaps more amusing than useful in your case. At the very least, you’ll come away with a better understanding of what a particular word could mean. But in the end, all that matters is what the words mean to you in the context in which you are reading them. Since that context is entirely out of my control, I may be coming off as a total pretentious jerk when all I mean to be is a harmless rambling fool looking to rediscover myself as a writer, a person, and someone who hopes to make something out beautiful from nothing but fleeting thoughts and waning energies.

~ Amelia Desertsong