Enough - when it means anything but

In part 1, I explored the reasons the word enough is spelled so weirdly, and traced over 1000 years of the history of the English language to do so. 

Source

In recent times, numerous attempts have been made to make English spelling more regular, less chaotic, but all have failed. Yes, there really was a group called the Speling Reform Asoshiasun. 

So enough continues to be spelled as enough. 

Spelling is one of the areas of language; it changes over time through popular use, but history shows it rarely does so through dictate and rule making. 

However, it's in popular use that the word enough gets totally weird. Enough might occasionally be spelled enuf, and we get it; but sometimes its meaning changes within a single sentence. And we get that too. That's why 'Enuf is enuf' makes sense.

The way we use words beyond their literal meaning can tell us so much about ourselves. 

What can we learn by exploring the word enough? 

From Nandini Pandey

Wordly Inspiration from Nandini Pandey, pondering the value, quandary and therapeutic benefit of writing during a pandemic. 

Nandini writes about the classics and this is a reflection on Ovid's poems Tristia (sad poems) and Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters from the Black Sea):

"But when the universe is collapsing in flames, there is a certain solace in building new little worlds on the page. In ordering words, wrestling thoughts into sense, giving fixable form to chaos when we can put right so little else. In reaching out from our own isolation to fellow humans in theirs, by a means that’s no substitute for human contact, but that’s managed on occasion to survive “Jupiter’s anger, fire and sword, the gnawing tooth of time.”

That’s what Ovid’s exile poems teach us: the consolation not of philosophy, but of poetry, in its original, almost magical sense of making."

See more Wordly Inspiration.

Enough - when enuf is not enauph

A group of protestors paced outside the annual local spelling bee. 

Ruly protestors Source

But they weren't protesting about the spelling bee. Their protest was against spelling itself.

'Simplify English spelling!', they demanded. Their posters read, 'Spelling shuud bee lojical' and 'enuf is enuf!'.

The spelling bee continued unaffected inside, as young students spelled nemesis, apartheid and campanile. Enough wasn't on the list though! 

The protestors eventually went home, having pointed out what we all know: English spelling seems chaotic and inconsistent. 

Why can't it be simpler? Why isn't enough spelled as enuf? And even though it isn't, why does 'Enuf is enuf' make sense anyway? 

TATKOP 127

There Are Two Kinds Of People: those who seek heros for inspiration and those who prefer villains. 

See more in the TATKOP series.