A rose by any other name
Friday, August 17, 2012 at 10:35AM 
Word count: 397 Reading time: 1-2 minutes
The ancient walking tracks that crisscross Australia are sacred pathways that the indigenous people call songlines, dream lines, or dreaming tracks. The Aboriginal people believe that they must continually sing to the land to keep it alive. As they sing they walk, navigating thousands of kilometres with clues provided by traditional songs.
When the European settlers tried to force their culture, and more specifically their work ethic, on the local tribes, they didn’t anticipate the phenomena of the walkabout. To the Europeans, walkabout meant a time when their workers simply put down tools and disappeared. To the Aboriginal people it meant a focussed journey, to reconnect with the spirit-creators by following the tracks laid down at the start of time, during The Dreamtime or The Dreaming.
To clarify, for all the journalists and marketing people out there, going walkabout does not mean taking a pleasant stroll around a garden or park as suggested on the Vancouver Tourism website. Or should I say it didn’t used to mean that? It used to be a specific and respectful word that denoted a spiritual practice by people whose culture has been under attack for over two hundred years.
I accept that language is organic. In the 1964 movie A Hard Day’s Night, Simon Marshall (Kenneth Haigh) pushed some shirts at Beatle George Harrison and said, “Now you'll like these. You'll really "dig" them. They're "fab," and all the other pimply hyperboles.”
Those hyperboles, which had replaced superlatives like wacco, wizard, and smashing, were soon discarded in favour of hippie expressions like cool, groovy, outasight. Today awesome, amazing, epic, brilliant and sick are conferred on much-admired and coveted things. As I write this, I’m sure other superlatives are incubating. And that’s good; language should evolve and change. Each generation needs to leave its own stamp.
Still, I have trouble accepting walkabout in the meaningless way it’s tossed around lately. On the other hand, I probably use dozens of expressions that once meant something very different than they do now so I’m trying to be patient with this one. In time I may even forget that walkabout meant anything other than a stroll in the park.
As you craft your work do you stumble on words that have taken on new meaning in a way that irritates you? Or are there new words that delight you with their flexibility and mental images?
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Photo: Alan Bolitho, LM
Reader Comments (4)
Maggie,
I am always impressed by your blogs and today is no exception. Reading about Walkabouts and Australian Aboriginal culture was intriguing to me. It's shame that such a spiritual word has morphed into something so Victorian-like. Sometimes when I listen to my teenage daughter and her friends speak, I feel like I'm listening to a foreign language. I despise the use of the word 'sick' to describe something cool. Maybe I'm just getting old. ;)
Allison
Hi Allison
I always appreciate your support!
I know I'll get used to hearing walkabout used this new way and maybe in time it won't even irritate me. OTOH using a traditionally negative word like 'sick' to describe something positiive feels too obvious. I don't use it that way. Just can't.
Maggie
I do understand your point of view. For me it gets difficult when English words with Latin and Greek roots end up meaning something completely different from what they stood for originally. But, languages do evolve. Although, it is nice, once in a while, to know certain words' history. Thanks for the walkabout:)
Thanks for stopping by, Monica.
I know some people don't like the perfunctory 'have a good day' that is so widely used but I think it's much nicer than so many alternatives, including glowering silence, so I always say thank you.
The word 'good-bye' (1590's) was an adaptation of the late 14th century "God be with you" or "Godbwye." I bet there were language purists who didn't like that evolution. ;-)
I know walkabout will evolve through common use. But having spent a few months camping under the blue dome of the Outback sky, it'll always have one particular meaning for me.
Maggie