Tilting to one side

For years I've chuckled about the mess the English language can create, given that a single word can take on so many meanings. I'm not the only one either, and some have made a decent living off the phenomenon. My experience with non-English languages is limited, so I don't know that it is all that unique to my native tongue, but I suspect that there is less confusion with languages where one word means one thing and not five other things. What is really fun is to find those instances where one meaning of a word makes the other meaning or meanings near comical, but at the same time very fitting.

For example, when I follow the strong urgings of the Mrs. to take pen to paper and create a series of tasks to be accomplished, and compare it to her series of tasks to be accomplished, the image of knights jousting is not the first thing that comes to mind, but there does seem to be a subtle significance to that image. A joust, after all, was a competition where the terminal objective was to knock someone off their high horse, so to speak. To me, calling the area where the joust occurred a list gives a new feel to creating a series of tasks that need to be completed. Ultimately someone wins and someone loses. Ultimately some task is knocked out and some task is left sitting. Problem is when too few are knocked out and too many are left sitting. Worse, when the group of knights from the next marsh over show up and challenge those left sitting, the place gets a little crowded. You know the feeling. Cross off one task and five others replace it. Yep, 'list' seems to be the right word.

Try this image on for size. Have so many knights around who want to challenge, and then load them up on a boat, and build the battle arena on the port side of the boat, thus giving a new perspective to the meaning of lists, especially when the starboard side of the boat is barely skimming the surface of the water from all the weight on the port side. Too much tilting to one side can cause a serious problem, even sink the boat, a catastrophic event from any perspective. Aye, mate, it be a shame to have the boat list from the lists. Thus we have my view that lists are bad things. Very, very bad. After all, I don't want my boat to sink, or the project for that matter.

Ah, the subtle psychological twists are endless, aren't they?