I share my feelings with you
From the middle of England, this is the voice of random and relaxing ASMR
When it’s the start of the working week, there is often somehow a malaise in the air. I was thinking about this earlier this week and I realised I was feeling insecure about things.
Insecure is an interesting word – why did I use that word, and what does it really mean?
It seems common to use that word in 2021, and I think most people would understand it meant you didn’t feel confident about something.
But has there always been that understanding?
Did Elizabethan or Georgian or Victorian England have a word like that? Moreover is there an equivalent in other languages, or do other languages have their own words for a state of mind that lacks certainty?
In terms of history it doesn’t feel like it’s been around all of my life, but it’s not apparent to me when it started to be used to describe how one might feel in British English.
I know it’s in the song from the end of the Monty Python film called “The Meaning Of Life” which is from the early 80s.
But my dictionaries (and yes, I have more than one) all define the word primarily as relating to physical or material safety of a thing rather than an emotional state, like an insecure footing.
So maybe it is newer than I realised.
Interestingly, the word insecure includes the word secure – meaning something that cannot be moved or lost. On reflection, maybe I was feeling like I had been moved around or I was feeling lost or adrift from my normal state.
Secure is also a very similar word to security, which has connotations with the physical safety of a building, but also has a meaning in financial terms around the guarantee of value of an agreed sum. Does feeling insecure equate to being uncertain of the value of something...maybe...maybe?
Still feeling insecure, I used Google translate to check what some other European languages made of the word.
In German “unsicher” is offered, meaning uncertain or unsure, and for Dutch “onzeker” (ohn-zeh-kerr) is similarly suggested.
In French Google suggests “précaire” (pray-care) which sounds like precarious – again, something physical rather than emotional.
For Spanish and Portuguese “insegura” (eenseggoora) is offered up, sounding very similar but meaning uncertain or unsure and so erring on the emotional side, and similarly for Italian “insicura” is suggested.
In Finnish the word “epävarma” (eh!parrvardma) is proposed as a translation, meaning "uncertain, insecure, doubtful". In Swedish “osäker” (ousakker) is suggested, meaning “uncertain, unsure, unsafe”. For Norwegian Google suggests “utrygg” (euutrig!), translating as insecure, and in Danish “usikker” (oohsigga) meaning uncertain or uneasy.
So there’s an interesting split there for translations of insecurity between languages that favour uncertainty and languages that make comparisons to the physical security of a thing.
And still, I feel insecure.
Now, we rely on language daily to describe our world and part of that is how we feel (even for blokes, who typically don’t talk that much about their feelings).
It is interesting to have options to choose from to help express our feelings and it is interesting too to have different cultural approaches to this.
Having rinsed things through looking at alternative words I now wonder if I really was feeling insecure or whether I was uncertain – who’s to say?
You’ll know if you have listened to these videos before that I am interested in you and where you are in the world. Do you ever feel insecure? If you do, do you use a direct translation for the word or does your language have a special word all of its own for...whatever that feeling is?
Why not let me know in a comment?