In my first linguistics class, my professor described our mental lexicon, or the dictionary of words in our brains, as file cabinets. As we store words, we group them together based on similar meanings. For instants, red, blue, and yellow could all be filed under "Colors" and "Adjectives," while blue could also be filed under "Nature" for the ocean and the sky.
Sometimes, however, when we try to access our file cabinets we have trouble finding the page or word we're looking for, but can come up with others in that same file folder. When a word is on the tip of our tongue or we say, "It's like quirky, but not quite," we're having a problem with our file cabinet.
This all came to mind because of a conversation with my girlfriend on the drive home on Sunday. We were discussing plot ideas for a Harry Potter-based show she's choreographing for when she said, "Exactly! Then Draco could be like a...a second spy? What's the word?"
I laughed and said, "Double agent?"
"Yes!"
Her brain couldn't quite find the pages for "double" and "agent" in her file folders, but next to "double" it found "second" and next to "agent" it found "spy." I found that to be completely fascinating, and I just wanted to share it.
On a side note, there was no post on Saturday, and I apologize. I ran out of my vacation buffer and didn't have time for a Saturday post. Perhaps I'll make an extra post sometime to make up for it.
Until then!
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