SECOND THOUGHTS

Do hungry time-travelers ever go back four seconds?

What’s so funny about this? This joke is an excellent example of how stress influences the meaning of words. I’m not talking about tense situations. Or maybe I am. After all time travel is all about changing tenses, that is moving from the present (tense) to the future (tense) to the past (tense). This movement can create a lot of tension, don’t you think? And tension creates stress. You‘ll have to excuse all my double entendres or word plays with double meaning. The word “tense” can be a noun or an adjective. As a noun, in a grammatical context, it defines the time when a verbal action takes place. Each language divides time up in different ways by looking at when an action begins and when it ends. For simplicity’s sake let’s just say past, present and future. But as an adjective “tense” has an altogether different meaning having to do with muscles stretching and with emotions straining in a metaphorical sense. The word “stress” has