How a dictionary, and of course a mountain, help me rise above the fog.

Mountains make great metaphors, but true meaning comes from word meanings.

I took this picture Monday morning while trailrunning on Cardigan Mountain, a bald peak just up the road from my house and cabin. This time of year, the water is warm while the nights sink into the forties, and on cloudless dawns the vapor fogs the valleys. The South Ridge Trail swoops to a ledge with a view to the lakes—Newfound, Squam, Winnipesaukee—and the White Mountains lie just beyond. I start out in the dark with a headlamp and then rise into the light in time for sunrise.

No, I did nothing to this photo except take it with my iPhone.

I get most of my ideas, a few good ones and many fun bad ones, on this peak. Strangely, my most entertaining thoughts come just as I top out onto the ridge. Mountains make great metaphors for writing. Still, I like the trope of rising above the fog even better. This particular morning, I was thinking about our social brain fog that comes from our misunderstanding of word meanings.

Take the word “constitution.” Up until the American founders stuck a capital-C onto the Constitution, a nation’s constitution had to do with its makeup, its collective ethos. Aristotle wrote about the “constitution” of city-states in his Politics. The revolutionists at the Constitutional Convention understood a constitution to be a temporary thing. When they gathered in stuffy Carpenter’s Hall every morning, a few would politely ask after the constitution of sweaty, gouty, 81-year-old Benjamin Franklin. They meant his current health and state of mind, not his DNA or physiognomy. While James Madison’s notes on the convention show a desire to apply a systematic structure to the makeup of the new nation, the delegates clearly understood that systems are dynamic. Naturally, they devised a means to amend it.

The current Supreme Court’s originalist philosophy bases decisions in part on what the original authors were thinking, along with the era’s public attitudes. Originalism got its start in the seventies—the nineteen seventies—as a reaction to the nation’s leftward tilt. Liberal justices had come to believe in a “living” Constitution, one whose text can be interpreted to meet the changing needs of a dynamic society. Fearing chaos, the conservatives insisted on calling a constitutional spade a spade, casting back to the authors’ original intents and beliefs. When conservative justices gained the majority, some began applying an extreme form of originalism, attempting to read the minds of eighteenth-century politicians and bourgeoisie. They followed the dictum of ur-conservative William F. Buckley:

“A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop…”

Wait: why did Buckley use “athwart”? Why not “in front of”? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, athwart means “across from side to side, transversely; usually but not necessarily in an oblique direction.” Buckley’s conservative sounds like a frantic pedestrian futilely trying to stop traffic on the Interstate.

Buckley wasn’t one to use words thoughtlessly, and I like to think he was showing some humility, along with a bit of sly humor. History doesn’t stop; but maybe a yelling patriot can give history pause before it runs him over.

Language stiffs might remember Buckley’s careening conservative when they yell Stop to changes in the English language. I can sympathize; I earlier wrote about five lost words—terms that have utterly changed their meaning, for better and worse. You might consider me an etymological originalist of sorts. I think it’s important to understand the etymology of the words we take for granted. When we learn the meaning of meanings, we can navigate their connotations through various audiences. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t expect people to use the old meanings—just to grasp our constantly evolving, small-c culture.

The meaning of meanings helps me escape the language fog. For instance, some years ago I was looking up hyperbole in the OED—not the online dictionary but a two-volume bound copy that comes with its own magnifying glass, making me feel like a jolly Bartleby the Scrivener. I wanted to know exactly how hyperbole might be considered a trope. It turns out that the word derives from the Greek “beyond,” as well as “throw” or “ball.” Hyperbole: Throw beyond.

That one visit to the Oxford English Dictionary launched an experiment that entailed, of course, a mountain. I’ll tell you about it before it appears in my next book.