Just Change One Letter

Long time reader

Brad Kyle

observed that there can be a radical change in meaning of an entire phrase brought about by the change of just one letter. Here’s Brad:

When sub-teaching at the turn of the century (this one), I passed by a kindergarten room with a large poster plastered on its door: "Enter this room to explore!" For some reason, I noticed how radically different the entire meaning of those 5 words become if you just replace the "r" in explore with a "d"!😱

I love observations like this. Our daily activities tend to make us focus on one thing at a time, but every now and then, our brains like to jump around and play a little bit. This sort of playful mental experimentation is how some of the most important insights have crept into my own life over the years, and I recommend allowing yourself the indulgence of mental rabbit holes every now and then.

Taking advantage of that drunken octopus phenomenon allows you to instantly find answers to things that puzzle you these days, so when Brad brought this idea up, I knew it was going to be some fun brain candy… but we need to find the right words for this game.

For instance, the words brain and braid are only off by one letter, and that’s only at the end of the word. However, these words have developed along separate etymological paths, so they’re not going to be of much use to us here. Even more importantly, we need to make sure an entire phrase changes its meaning with our little transformation.

Here’s a good one to kick things off for us: to lick things off for us. One means starting something, but the other thing means… well, ewwww!!!!! You can see how complex English is here, because the first idea uses a metaphor, so you’re not literally kicking anything off of anything else whenever you start something. The second phrase is, presumably, taken literally.

Likewise, when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon river—the beginning of the end of the Roman republic—he famously noted, “alea iacta est.” In English, we translate this to the die is cast, which sounds poetic and profound to our ears.

Contrast this gravitas with the following:

The pie is cast.

Not as profound, right? There’s that comparison between one phrase that’s a metaphor, and another that’s literal. If one letter utterly transforms the meaning of a phrase, this is often the culprit.

Mixing the metaphor with the literal isn’t the only kind of phrase transformation, though. If you’re at the grocery store and there’s a huge sale on Coke, you’re probably not going to worry too much. But if you hear there’s a huge male on coke, that might be another story!

If you survive your trip to the store and get home, you might want to make a toast with your Coke… but please don’t make a boast. A toast would be polite, but a boast would be rude.

Both of these cases keep the literal meaning in both cases. I cheated a little bit with the sale/male one, but only because I changed Coke (a proper noun) to coke (slang for cocaine)… I’m counting this one, though.

Another classic phrase is “time heals all wounds.” If I change this to time heals all hounds, it makes me think about one of the times Molly had blood drawn at the vet:

Besides the fun of playing a game like this, is there any use to it?

I think there is. If your brain draws a connection that wasn’t there before, between two previously unconnected ideas, this can lead to some surprising revelations. This is a way to practice divergent thinking, a way to draw these sorts of unexpected connections without explicitly seeing them first.

Divergent thinking means that you can use the lessons from other fields, often filtering something through an entirely different lens than ever before. The ideas of the likes of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Feynman have given me plenty of examples of this sort of concept, to pluck something from one area and then to apply it somewhere unexpected.

You can read a bit about my experiences with learning how to channel this approach in my own life here, along with some great polymathic thinkers from history:

By allowing these sorts of amusing observations into your world, and taking note of little odd moments you notice, you may be able to draw some interesting conclusions.

Trying to leave the doorway to the absurd ajar is always a good idea.