But not always the same thing.

It depends on who’s doing the talking and who’s doing the listening.

Reason number 983458 why writing is hard.

I was watching a video on house design recently. Specifically, it was about combining styles and different tastes, when you and your spouse/partner/roommate have wildly different ideas of what’s attractive and how you want to live. This was of interest to me because, as some of you in the audience already know, my husband and I have very different tastes in design and decoration.

One of the main pieces of advice in this video was to think about and discuss what you like in specific terms, and be prepared to elaborate on exactly what those words mean to you. Simply saying ‘minimalist’ or ‘modern farmhouse’ can evoke contradictory images in the speaker and the listener. Saying that you like light colored woods or that you can’t stand carpets is more specific, especially if you can explain why you like or don’t like those things. Maybe light woods make the house feel lighter and airier, and carpets are a no-go because they’re harder to clean than hard surfaces. Further discussion can pin down the edges of your opinions and help you figure out if there’s any times and places when a strongly held opinion could be modified- maybe carpets are actually acceptable in bedrooms because they don’t get as dirty as the public spaces of the house.

Even a word like ‘comfortable’ can be confusing; it evokes a feeling, but each reader visualizes and experiences comfort very differently. My husband, a person blessed in both size and stature, is comfortable in large, open indoor spaces. A ten foot ceiling is low to him; he’d prefer twelve feet or more. I, a smaller person, am comfortable in smaller spaces that have lower ceilings, about eight feet. The same word means different things in practice.

On the flip side, we’ve discovered a shared liking for sturdy construction (I like timber frames; he likes stone) and a shared dislike of open plan houses. So we’re not diametrically opposed in all ways; there is hope.

But it illustrates how difficult description can be, and, in a book, how jarring it can be for the reader to go around assuming that the main character, previously described as short, is five feet tall, only to discover that as an alien, ‘short’ actually means the character is a mere seven feet tall. Fortunately, the reader and writer don’t usually have to live together, and fight about whether the curtains are blue or green for the rest of their lives (or how tall the alien is).

Sometimes this is innocently done- we’ve all seen the bemused vs. amused vs. confused mix-ups (if you’re not sure, bemused is closer to confused, but has been used in practice as a synonym for amused). Language changes over time, and even ordinary words take on different meanings. The changing definition of ‘nice’ is another good one; it used to mean precise or accurate; now it usually means pleasant or polite.

It’s possible to intentionally use this as a technique to mislead the reader- in a good way. In the military, for example, ‘encouragement’ usually means yelling at the person who’s being encouraged, which is not how it’s used in civilian life. That disconnect can cause conflict between characters, increase tension for the reader, and generally make for interesting character moments.

A malicious writer can use this disconnect to mess with the reader- seen a lot in political and philosophical arguments, where terms like ‘right-wing’ or ‘left-wing’ mean vastly different things to different people. It’s also possible to do it in fiction; I don’t have a lot of good examples of that because I don’t read books from writers who do it.

There’s not a good one-size-fits-all solution to this lack of consensus. As a writer, I’d recommend reading as much as you can, particularly in your genre, so you learn all the ways each word can be used. As a reader, I’d recommend reading as much as possible, so you’re also familiar with various meanings and how they change over time. And of course, not getting too precious about your fiction, so that your world doesn’t come crashing down if you find out that the author used a word to mean something different from what you thought it meant.

Much easier to do with fiction than with real life.

After all, you don’t have to live with the person.