The Power of a Word

John Doe

English

Mrs. Robinson

01/14/2003

The Power of a Word

Passion: strong emotion, desire. The Power of a Word is all about how it is interpreted. Interpretation can change the meaning of any word. An eighty-year old man’s interpretation of the word passion would probably vary from a twenty-year old woman’s interpretation of passion. Interpretation is key when it comes to defining a word.

Rick Shaw says that passion is “The desire to do something that you like come hell or high-water”. Meanwhile, my younger brothers believe that “Passion is how you feel about women”. It is all in how people view things. I could stare at an abstract painting for hours, wondering what it is supposed to be. While Mrs. Goulet could take one glimpse at it and give you a two-hour long interpretation about what that painting means.

The word passion was first interpreted in 1175. It was interpreted as “the suffering of Christ on the cross”, hence the Passion of the Christ. Nearly two-hundred years later, 1374, the word began to be interpreted as “strong emotion, desire”. In 1588 passion was being defined as “sense of sexual love”. By 1638 the word was understood, by most, to mean “Strong liking, enthusiasm, and or predilection”. After this many different meaning of the word passion, it is easy to understand why it has so many different interpretations today.

Different languages also have different interpretations of words. The word passion in the English language would probably have a different meaning to Arabic people. But words do not only differ from person to person or language to language. Words will also heavily differ from culture to culture. Passion