At first I thought common nouns were hardest hit, coffee and doorway and so on, but it soon became clear that the missing were mostly adjectives.
This quote explores the subtle complexities of language and memory, highlighting how certain parts of speech are more resilient or vulnerable in our cognition. Initially, the author thought that concrete nouns like 'coffee' and 'doorway' would be the most affected, perhaps because they are tangible and easily visualized. However, the discovery that adjectives are mostly missing reveals an intriguing aspect of linguistic and lexical networks. Adjectives, which modify nouns and add descriptive nuance, may be more prone to slipping away, possibly because they are less anchored in concrete reality and more dependent on contextual association. This highlights how language shapes our perception of reality; the words we consider essential are often those grounding us physically and concretely, while the more abstract or descriptive words fade more easily from memory. It prompts a reflection on how language evolves, how certain words are prioritized or neglected over time, and how the essential nature of some words makes them more durable in our collective consciousness. The mention of missing adjectives could also be symbolic—emphasizing the loss of nuance, color, and detail in communication when the descriptive parts of speech fade, leaving just the bare bones of information. It's a meditation on the fragility of language and the importance of different word classes in conveying depth of meaning. Recognizing which parts of speech are more vulnerable can allow us to appreciate the richness that adjectives and other descriptive words add to language, and perhaps motivate us to preserve and nurture them, so they don't disappear entirely in our personal or cultural vocabularies.