#675 Undepressed

Words and how we use them are an endless source of fascination to me.
Like this: I was un-decorating my Christmas ornamentation the other day and I told someone I was de-decorating, obviously trying to describe the process of taking stuff down.
And it occurred to me that the term decorate was already a undo type of term. You can detoxify and you are un-toxifying something. You can decode and you are breaking a code. You can decompress and get less compression.
But what about words like declare, decant and decorate? What do they imply?
If you decant a bottle of wine does that mean you canted it in the first place?
Or someone did? One of those professional wine guys tipping the bottle as he’s filling it? Is he a canter? Or is that some kind of special Jewish singer? No, wait a minute, that’s spelled differently. Canter is a type of run a horse does, isn’t it? Does that have something to do with how the wine first runs into the bottle?
And what about declare? When I eat an éclair is the process of its disappearance a declare?
Or if I declare something loudly is the opposite of doing so to simply clare? Biting your tongue perhaps, so that you don’t shout out an opinion?
What’s with mister silent?
Oh, he’s claring.
Then, of course, there’s my original problematic word, decorate. From all this deduction, I’m led to believe that the process of de-decorating is actually corating.
What are you doing on New Years?
Oh, that’s the annual time our family does its corating. Sometimes the whole neighborhood seems to do it. Me and all my neighbors were out corating our holiday lights on our houses.
You mean you rated them together?
No, no, not co-rating. Corating, the opposite of de-corating. It made us all feel really pressed.
Pressed?
Yeah that’s the happy feeling I get when the anxiety and sadness of the holiday season is over and a New Year has begun.
I’m not de-pressed, I am totally, wonderfully, pressed.
America, ya gotta love it