Language is by its very nature used commonly and without much thought of what is actually being said. This is necessary for its continued use as a means of transmission of information, but a lot of the richness of its history is lost when its components are left unexamined. There are stories that inhabit our very language, and in a sense our very thoughts, given how we think in language.

Take the above image. It is a lizard straddling several little towns, Andover and Methuen and so many others, resting its head over Newburyport. One familiar with the geography of Massachusetts notices that the southern bit of this lizard, Lynn and Chelsea, are close to Boston, whilst Haverhill and Salisbury are up near the border with New Hampshire. Why does the lizard take this position? The answer is that it is an electoral district.

This district was described by some as a “Salamander.” The governor of Massachusetts of the time was Elbridge Gerry, for whom this salamander was drawn. It was clearly an attempt to get more Democratic-Republicans elected. And so, they coined the term ‘gerrymandering’ after the governor and his cronies’ attempt to pack the legislature in his favor.

In any given sentence you utter there may well be an interesting story hidden within the obvious. When you talk about boycotting a company, you channel the interesting case of Charles Boycott. Whenever you bring up the home city of Batman, you channel the story of how the wise men of a little town in Nottinghamshire prevented King John from building a highway through their village, and how ‘Gotham’ was originally pronounced.

You can even get the echoes of old societies, old hierarchies, and old caste systems. Consider the difference in connotation between “a dignified reception” and “a hearty welcome.” The former sounds posh and respectable, and the latter sounds rugged and perhaps lower-class.

The reason for this is that the former is derived from French and the latter is from the Germanic roots of the English language. This is the millennium-old legacy of the Norman Conquest of England, from which our language was changed from something resembling Flemish to its own strange and fascinating hodgepodge of Germanic grammar with Romance vocabulary, not to mention the vocabulary pilfered from the rest of the world as both Britain and America conquered their way to empire.

In conclusion, whenever you say anything, you tell more than just the story you intend to tell. English has plenty, by virtue of its globe-spanning reach, but all languages do to some degree, for French, Spanish, and Italian, among others, channel Ancient Rome, and I have read that certain Chinese characters betray their roots in Chinese folklore. As such, one can argue that there is no truly original sentence, for we tell the stories of those from centuries ago in our daily speech.