True North

"You are my true north" seemed like a profound and poetic way to express how important someone is to you... so I've made a few versions of this card with some great "compass" paper I had in my stash. Then I looked it up in Wikipedia (my favorite place to go for more information than I really ever wanted to know) and discovered the descriptor "disambiguation."

True North refers to the position of the north pole relative to the navigator's position, (as opposed to magnetic north or grid north on a map). Since navigators relied on celestial maps for millennia,  I thought it might be an ancient Latin-based term.  But it really just sounded  SO "my generation."  We salt our communication with so much corporate-speak and geek-flavored terminology. We frequently choose the "50 cent word" over a simple one that would get the message across to more people.I'm as guilty of it as anyone. After all, if you speak a word-rich language like English that borrows words from everywhere, you may as well get your money's worth!

So I went off to another favorite website, Dictionary.com, because they usually have good etymology (the history and linguistic change of words... one of my "wordsmith" obsessions.)  And, not much to my surprise, the term's origin is thought to be in 1960-65.  It means to remove the ambiguity from something.  Finding the north pole removed the ambiguity from the navigator's puzzlement over where in the world he might be.

So instead of  the word "love," which I put inside this card, perhaps I'll start using "You have removed the ambiguity from my feelings for you."  How's THAT for a tender sentiment?

And I am unambiguous about my appreciation for those of you who drop in on this blog and comment by post or in person.  You keep me plugging along.