Surprisingly Apt Definitions Out of the Mouths of Babes

Once again Joan Maturko has sent me her annual list of definitions thought up by pupils in her Redondo Beach kindergarten class.

As always they reflect a 5-year-old’s charming misapprehensions about adult social concepts. At the same time, their definitions often hit the mark in a most surprising way. They have a ring of truth. For example, their definitions of marriage are simplistic but essentially accurate. “When you have a baby. When two people like each other.”

What could be better? A partnership in which two people of opposite sex become legally joined for the purpose, among others, of having babies.

Webster’s gives half a dozen multiple-choice definitions, none of which includes the essential facts as set forth in the children’s definitions:

1. “A state of being married; married life, wedlock, matrimony.” (Merely synonyms; they don’t define it at all.) 2. “The act of marrying; wedding” (Same complaint) “The rite or form used in marrying.” (A technicality.)

Those don’t tell us that one party does or ought to like the other, or that one of its purposes is to have a baby (or several).

If you didn’t already know what marriage was, you would learn more about it from the kindergartner’s definitions than from the dictionary’s.

Their definition of fossil is charming: “Like a rock that you crack open and it has a picture of a dinosaur in it.”

Lawyer: “Somebody in court who thinks you didn’t do it.” (Close. Actually, it’s somebody who doesn’t want anybody else to think you did it.)

Terminate : “When you have bugs in your house and people come and get them out; you kill somebody on purpose.”

Oddly, history has much the meaning of terminate . “You’re dead; when you vanish,” which obviously come from watching too much television. (“You’re history.” Said by the bad guy to the hero when he’s about to terminate him.)

Sometimes abstract words are defined in terms of schoolroom routine: Science : “When you’re at school and your teacher says to open your science books.”

Sometimes they handle four-syllable words quite well: Appreciate : “You like what the person gave you. When you’re done playing soccer, you can cheer. You like what someone did for you.”

When defining behave one pupil came up with a neat double negative: “Not being not nice.”

As usual, the pupils mistake adore for a door ; “A door that doesn’t let wind come in; where you come out.” (Perhaps, in fairness, Maturko ought to explain that adore is not a door but a feeling one person has for another.)

I am puzzled by the definition for bachelor : “Cooking food.” That must mean that a bachelor is a man who must cook his own food.

Maturko said she was especially pleased by one pupil’s on-the-mark definition of critic as “people who talk about TV and movies.” (That leaves out book critics and music critics, but kindergartners probably don’t read them.)

The definitions for education aren’t very satisfactory. “When you get a job. When you’re going on a trip.” They suggest that kindergartners don’t quite get the point of education. But who does?

I like the definition of elastic : “Something that goes around your shorts that you bend.”

Their definitions of brain are very elementary: “Your head. It’s in your head. You think in your brain. Where you think and you think and you know what to say.” Well, how would you define brain? Wouldn’t most of us say it’s what you think with?

Obviously most kindergartners would be incapable of writing out the definitions as reported by Maturko. She says she asks them to define words and they speak their definitions out and she takes them down as delivered. I hope she can obtain some classroom equipment so she can tape the answers.

Equal: “Two and two make four.” What could be more equal than that?

When laughing at kindergartner’s difficulty in defining words, we must keep in mind our own difficulty in defining words. As I have shown, the dictionary doesn’t do too well with marriage.

And if you think it’s easy, try defining horse without saying “It’s an animal you ride on.”

Webster says: “Any of several domesticated or wild varieties of a large, strong species (Equus caballus) of perissodactylous mammal having a long flowing tail; used for transportation, work etc.”

Perissodactylous mammal indeed. A horse is an animal you ride on, is what it is.

By the way, Maturko says this is the first year in several in which a pupil has not defined debate as “what you fish with.”

I don’t know. That’s what politicians use debate for. Fishing.