What's A Desk?

I found myself recently contemplating once again the distinction between two different pieces of furniture. The great example of an ambiguous dividing line is that of the podium and those other things with which it is so consistently confused. There are lecterns, which are the thing people are mostly thinking of. A podium is what Olympians receive their medals on, among other things. There are also rostrums, or perhaps I should say rostri (if my Latin hasn't deserted me). It's a very muddled picture, and what authority is there to set people straight. Certainly the industry responsible for turning these things out has been derelict, and that may prove to be their undoing.

More clearly defined is something else that provoked me along these lines: the desk and the table. It's simple enough, and credit is due to someone for ensuring that the popular imagination, feeble as it is, has managed to seize upon the difference between them. A table is merely a plane affixed to four legs which bear the weight. It can be low or high, but it's a table. What makes a desk different? After a few moments' thought, of course it came to me. You're just adding some backing to three of the sides, and probably drawers to the front. It's sort of like the difference between ordinary pants and cargo pants, with the caveat that desks are for grownups and cargo pants really are not.

I find myself wondering why I'm taking the time to hold court on this trifling subject. I'm thinking that I could start saying this to people in person and having them gaping at me, wondering how stupid I must be for thinking they're too ignorant to know already what I'm laboring to explain. Let it just  be said that I'm going on the record with a small and relatively unimportant but meaningful belief. I hope in a way that it is an unnecessary explanation, but my expectations of people grow more modest over time.

More important is the difference between words. I mean to get to the most egregiously abused ones one by one in future, some of which I'm honestly not confident I completely have a handle on. One difference between me and others is that I pause before using words and terms if I'm not sure that I stand on firm ground as far as meaning is concerned. We have a real crisis with meaning in the world. It might be our biggest problem. There's more data, more news and more noise, but no more meaning and maybe less than there has been in the past. I hope I'm doing something about that.