My first encounters with this have been on accident: in language creation.

I began to create a language, then I wanted to tie it to a culture I had some experience with and I wanted to create it quickly. But the more the culture and the language began to interweave, the more I became startled by the connotations of the word “blood.” To be blooded is to be of their people. To be unblooded is to be ignorant or undesirable or young or enemy. To be blooded is to have proven your worth in risk or sacrifice. Blood is intimacy and strength and battle-worthy and accepted and family and nationality and the foundation of their entire society. It’s a dual-edged word, because they are a fierce people well-skilled in battle. Their men are ranked on their abilities in combat. Their highest leader is the most dangerous foe.

And to the woman from outside their culture who married in and at first saw all the similarities, it became a harsher and harsher burden for her that everything that bound her to her husband, everything good between them, also represented everything violent and harsh and foreign to her in their culture. She could not separate the two.

And it’s just that little piece by little piece that changes how a person views a single word.

This is one of my writing notebook articles. Stash. Reread. Write. Reread. Revise. Reread. Keep handy.

Thanks, Juliette.