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April 13, 2024
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| Word of the
Week--"perspective" |
Definition--the balanced or
objective view of a situation, in which all its elements assume their due
importance; Example: After a flustered few days, he finally got things
into perspective.
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| Discussion-- Ever noticed how two
people can witness or experience the exact same event and have completely
different things to say about it afterward? A married couple can have an
arugment and both parties can think that they are right based on the same
body of facts. Several pedestrians can witness a robbery and then each one
can give the police a completely different description of the perpetrator.
Almost everyone has had an experience like the ones I just described.
Needless to say, dealing with someone whose perspective is different from
our own can be very frustrating.
Still, we realize that different points of view are what makes our
experience as human beings so rich. Reading, speaking, governing and every
other form of communication would hardly be worthwhile if everyone shared
one common perspective. For if that were the case, we would all say the
same things.
In literature, perspective or "point of view" refers to the narrator of
a piece and how he or she relates to the people and events described. In
art, perspective might be the angle from which an artist portrays the
subject of his work, or the view he provides for his audience.
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| Etymology--The term
perspective comes from the Latin perspect, a form of
perspicere meaning to inspect or look through.
Dutch, French, German, Spanish and Italian all show similar roots.
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Foreign
Translations
| German: |
Perspektive (f) |
| Dutch: |
perspectief (het) |
| French: |
perspective (f) |
| Italian: |
prospettiva |
| Spanish: |
perspectiva | |
Jane Ellis
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