Archives: kel-richards

WordWatch: Evangelical

Word Watch

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Is it time for us to stop using the word ‘evangelical’ as our primary self-label?

We have long been used to the media being thoroughly muddled about those who count as ‘evangelicals’ and those who don’t. Odd American televangelists (even the use of that word is a bit of a give away, isn’t it?) and people we would regard as full-on heretics are labelled in the popular media as one of us— as ‘evangelicals’. More recently (over the past six months or so), I have noticed more and more people from a very wide spectrum calling themselves ‘evangelicals’: when asked, charismatics, pentecostals, fundamentalists and others (some from the fringe of their movements rather than centre) identify themselves as ‘evangelicals’. (more…)

Literally

Life, Word Watch

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Literally no-one understands the word ‘literally’ anymore. I suspect that the meaning of the word has changed over the last generation or two. ‘Literally’ came into English from Old French (so blame William the Conqueror). It came from a French word meaning ‘letter’. So when it was first recorded (which was around 1475), it meant ‘to the letter’ or ‘by the letter’. In other words, ‘literally’ began with the meaning that the words were an exact representation of what they said. But that is no longer the case.

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Mansions

Thought, Word Watch

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As a child, I found the architecture of heaven a little baffling. What puzzled me was John 14:2: “In my Father’s house are many mansions” (KJV). According to the Macquarie Dictionary, a ‘mansion’ is “an imposing or stately residence”. A ‘house’, on the other hand, is a suburban cottage—the sort of place I lived in with my parents and brothers. So how do you fit mansions into a house? Is heaven like Dr Who’s Tardis—bigger on the inside than the outside?

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Biography

Thought, Word Watch

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Are the four Gospels biographies of Jesus? At one level, this can be answered by New Testament scholars who study the genre of biographical writing in the first century. But there is also a linguistic answer to this question—and linguistically, all four Gospels are most definitely biographies.

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Cumber

Life, Word Watch

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‘Cumber’ is a rather quaint, old-fashioned word that we don’t hear much any more. We still talk occasionally about something being an ‘encumbrance’, but ‘cumber’ (the shorter verb from which this noun is constructed) has largely disappeared.

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Bowels

Life, Word Watch

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As a young Christian, I was torn between bafflement, amusement and embarrassment when the good old King James Version was read aloud in church, and we heard Paul telling the Philippians that he longed after them “in the bowels of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:8). I mean, it almost sounds blasphemous, doesn’t it? Or, at the very least, an invasion of privacy. Did we really need to hear that in church? And then a bit later on in the same letter, Paul is at it again: “If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies …” (Phil 2:1).

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Partner

Life, Word Watch

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In current PPC1 English, the words ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ have been banned and replaced by the single word ‘partner’. I would like to be able to mock this in loud derisive tones as being part of the modern corruption of language. Sadly, the facts get in the way.

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