12
" All words have to be coined by a wordsmith at some point in the mists of history. The wordsmith had an idea to get across and needed a sound to express it. In principle, any sound would have done - basic principle of linguistics is that the relation of a sound to a meaning is arbitrary - so the first coiner of a term from for a political affiliation, for instance, could have used glorg or schmendrick or mcgillicuddy. But people are poor at conjuring sounds out of the blue, and they probably wanted to ease their listeners understanding of the coinage rather than having to define it or illustrate it with examples. So they reached for a metaphor that reminded them of the idea and they hoped would evoke a similar idea in the minds of their listeners, such as band or bond for a political affiliation. The metaphorical hint allowed the listeners to cotton on to the meaning more quickly than if they had had to rely on context alone, giving the word an advantage in the Darwinian competition among neologisms […] The word spread and became endemic to the community, adding to the language’s stock of apparent metaphors. But then it came to be used often enough, and in enough contexts, the speakers kicked the ladder away, and today people think not a whit about the metaphorical referent. It persists as a semantic fossil, a curiosity to amuse etymologists and wordwatchers [stet], but with no more resonance in our minds than any other string of vowels and consonants. "
― Steven Pinker , The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
17
" Sex has high stakes, including exploitation, disease, illegitimacy, incest, jealousy, spousal abuse, cuckoldry, desertion, feuding, child abuse, and rape. These hazards have been around for a long time and have left their mark on our customs and our emotions. "
― Steven Pinker , The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
