I like words. How they sound, how they feel rolling off your tongue and lips. I like avuncular and laconic and phlegmatic. I like it when words I didn't even know I knew come tumbling out during a conversation. I usually surprise myself when I dip into my subconscious lexicon, as small as it is. (I am certainly no William Buckley.)
The other day as I was driving to my university to drag the uninterested through the issues surrounding the unread textbook chapters when I passed a group of inmates picking up the trash along the roadside. The warning sign said, "Prisoners Working."
Suddenly my over-burdened mind hit upon a question that bugged me the rest of the day. Prisons and jails are both places where criminals are incarcerated, right. So why are "prisoners" the inmates, but "jailers" run the jails? Ah, the English language.
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