In Memory of Fine - April 26, 2010

Good Monday morning! In the English language we have another of those words with more than one meaning. Today we lament the end of the word fine. The dictionary says that we use fine for perfected, superior in quality; better than average; excellent; very good; also for very thin or slender as in a fine thread; or even for a payment to settle a matter as in a parking ticket. Interestingly, all of those meanings have the same Latin root finis, meaning finish. How did we get to all these different meanings from one root word?

We know that English seems to have a way of doing that, making the language quite difficult for all of us to learn. Sadly though, fine has been destroyed by a couple of customs. We walk by a person and he asks, "how are you doing?" and we answer, "fine." Often he doesn't really care about the answer and so we give him a stock answer that means nothing. Fine now means the same as a general grunt like "urg" or "mmmf". I used to run experiments in the corporate hallways to check this.

Corporate minion: "How ya doin'?"

Me: "A frog sat in my Wheaties this morning..."

CM: "Great, I'm doing fine."

Me: "Your britches is on fire."

CM: "Yup, gotta get back to workin' ya know."

Lost in my experiments was the meaning of fine; somewhere the word became meaningless. Of course there is a price to pay for this as well. If your wife buys a nice dress (listen to Ken Davis' Lighten Up this morning) and you say, "That's fine," you might as well have said, "I don't give a hoot about the dress or you!" Fine has become a non-committal and dismissing word. You might get an angry shout in return, "If you don't like it, why didn't you just say so!" While it may not be wise to blurt out that you hate the new dress, at least in committing to dislike, she can go get another one. People, especially spouses, hate to be ignored or dismissed with a bland, "that's fine" comment. In the corporate hallways, people have come to expect the meaningless "I'm fine", but in a close relationship, wives and friends want to know where you stand on the matter at hand.

Poor fine just kind of loses out in modern conversation, stripped of meaning by overuse and incorrect usage. We stop to remember the word that once denoted perfected and superior in quality...

Fine then! Just be that way. Love had, and still has, a similar problem, but God brought it back. Through God's love, we are redeemed in Christ. Through the love of Christ, Paul wrote the great chapter on love in 1 Corinthians. Through love we learn to sacrifice for each other and to glorify God in all that we do. Love as a word might have died at the hands of scriptwriters writing about sex or advertisers talking about liking a product, but it hasn't yet. We carry the light of God's love in this dark world; let it shine out for Him! Let us resolve to not let love become a dying word in this darkness all around us. Love one another as Christ commanded us.

Bucky