The other day, for no good reason, I wanted to use the word “swell”, I thought it would be a swell thing to do. So I took out a dust rag and started to dust “swell” off, which was no easy feat. I had to get the rag between the two l’s and give it a few buffs before the accumulated grime budged. The groves in the w were also problematic, but after a while, with the aid of some lemon pledge, “swell” looked brand new and ready for use. It felt almost like a historic moment, I knew “swell” hadn’t been used since the 50’s. Its last official appearance had, in fact, been in an "I Love Lucy" episode, I thought the event might even make it into the local 6 o’clock news. Except that I couldn’t do it. I had the newly polished “swell” on the tip of my tongue, I was ready to make history with the utterance and then I tasted “swell”. I would have expected “swell” to taste like lemon pledge after using half a canister on it, but no. It tasted stale and it felt a little like cobwebs in my mouth and at the decisive moment “swell” never came out, instead “cool” made its regular appearance. I think the reason “cool” is still around and “swell” died off is simply that the double o’s in “cool” gather less dust than the w and double l’s in “swell”. Language is a living thing and it’s continuously evolving. But here is a little known fact: the evolution of language is a derivative of our willingness to dust.
Now you know!
(I know that many linguists out there will want to use this theory for their doctorate dissertations, all I ask is that you don’t give me credit)
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