Language is fascinating. Just think. A baby has the potential to produce the sounds of every language but after hearing only the language of parents, certain sounds lay dormant.

Now jump ahead into the teen years and the language learned turns into an innovative system of experimentation with words. You don't badmouth but you "dis" someone. Bad becomes good. And in our language labels abound with left becoming radical and right being conservative. There is black humor and a green political party.

So many great words are being fenced in that it is time to surf the dictionary - either your ragged Webster's or the one that came with your state-of-the-art computer and begin to broaden your vocabulary.

There are zillions of unused terms. Yes, the term zillions is in the dictionary. I didn't make it up. It means an indeterminately large number such as referring to mosquitoes around your camp in Alaska.

Here's one I've never used, epididymis, which is an elongated mass of convoluted efferent tubes at the back of the testis. No I didn't make that up either. I opened my old red covered dictionary, closed my eyes and pointed and this word jumped out at me. And, of course, when surfing the dictionary you find a definition, which includes at least three other words you also have to look up.

I could go on about the uses for an old dictionary - propping up my computer monitor that is too low for a tall person like me or pressing the flowers from a special corsage.

Speaking of pressing flowers I am reminded of a science project that I completed in high school. I still have that notebook with all those flowers and leaves I snipped, pressed and labeled. My mind goes back to climbing the hill behind our town library where I wandered about gathering all the specimens, never realizing that others my age were up there making out. So much for naivet/ which as you may know means deficient in worldly wisdom.

Getting back to interesting words, I recently got into a heated e-mail discussion with some pet owners. I had the nerve to call pet owners slave owners because they own their pets and the pets have to please and do the bidding of their owners in order to be fed and cared for. I was peppered by return e-mails, one declaring that I was employing anthropomorphism in my argument. I now have a new word to add to my vocabulary.

No matter how I intellectualize the status of pet animals I can't get over the emotions that rise in me when I remember the days when even a wife was considered chattel. Now here's another word that isn't in the vernacular these days. I guess that is because so many women's advocates worked so diligently to free women from this powerless status of being regarded as chattels. Because I remember those days, I empathize with pets that are owned and have to please their owners.

In a world with so many status levels and a world with so many other living creatures it takes empathy and understanding to live and let live. Perhaps we humans ought to pattern after the wolf pack.

The strongest and most intelligent one rules as the Alpha male, with the Alpha female as his mate. And even though the Alpha male may reprimand lesser wolves, there is no bloodshed and after any altercation peace reigns once more.

The Beta male, second in command, stands by to assist and, in time, to mount a challenge when the Alpha male has aged or is injured. Thus the pack is assured of competent leadership. Humans could take a lesson from this social system. Perhaps the word civilization would then have new meaning if all humans could finally learn to be civil to one another, even after differences arise.

Georgie Bright Kunkel writes regularly and can be reached at wseditor@robinsonnews.com