Ask Amritsar: Love, The Taxonomy (Not The Tax Auditor)

Dear Amritsar,

What is love?

Mel N. Colea

PS: No, seriously.

Hey, Babe,

They say that Arctic peoples have 27 words for snow. This is, in fact, untrue: they only have three words for snow. As it happens, each word is 17 syllables long, and variable pronunciations and indifferent lexicographers have, over time, made it seem like there were many more.

Love is a four letter word, so you might reasonably expect that there aren't too many ways to pronounce it. You have clearly never attended a United Nations debate. Still, counter-intuitive though it may be, according to a study by researchers at the Poynter Sisters Institute, there are at least 7,327 distinct meanings for the word love in the English language.

According to the study, called , "a man might say that he loves his wife and he loves his car, but he wouldn't love them in the same way. At least, not without being begged to seek professional help." Authors Folger, Nescafe, et al suggested that new words be coined to deal with the different ways people use the word. These include:

Of course, everybody believes that their form of love is the purest, most profound expression of the emotion there is. But, really, who is to say that love of slats (louver) is superior in any way to love of fine art that you don't personally understand but feel deeply attached to because it seems like the thing to do (louvre)? Except, of course, for the love of aardvarks' eyebrows (lolove), which all reasonable people believe is icky.

Belief in the superiority of one's form of love leads to odd fracturing along geographic and temporal lines. For example, people who love American Supreme Court decisions before 1950 (lovve) cannot understand the passion of people who love Canadian Supreme Court decisions before 1950 (lovvve). Not only that, but neither of those groups has any respect for people who love American Supreme Court decisions since 1950 (vlove).

As if this wasn't confusing enough, the way Folger, Nescafe, et al conceive it, the same term can actually mean different things in different places. The word vloove, for instance, means the love of Spanish diacritical marks in the northern United States, the love of horseradish in the southern United States, the love of hourglasses with women's figures in northern England, the love of the worm at the bottom of the bottle in southern England and the love of personal mixed tapes in Poland. People who live in these areas are convinced that their use of the word is the only correct one. Families have split. Wars have been started. Academics have made tenure over the issue, and lesser people have been broken by it.

Given the huge number of ways in which the word is used, when you ask: "What is love?" I in turn have to ask: "Could you be more specific?"

Dear Amritsar,

I think it would be best if I joined a monastery.

Mel N. Colea

Hey, Babe,

Good move. You'll only be tempted by 57 different varieties of love there!

Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service's sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: Howard Jones may have been no Wittgenstein, but, to be fair, old Wittie didn't perform at Live Aid, so, umm...there.