I am lost for words.
You (singular) are lost for words.
He, she or it is lost for words.
We are lost for words.
You (plural) are lost for words.
They are lost for words.
In Latin I learnt to
conjugate verbs and to
decline
nouns. But now all
words are declining, have declined, will decline — now I'm on to
tense.
And tense is what it often is.
I often think it is like trying to converse in a language in which one
is not fluent — the draining effort of trying to translate as one goes
along, the ease of some parts not compensating for the frustration of
the difficult parts — often the most important parts.
For the most part, 'she is lost for words' is the situation. During one
of her admissions to hospital I 'helpfully' explained to the medical
student clerking her that she was a text-book case of 'nominal aphasia'
which we all learn about in medical school. It really is quite
astonishing how what get lost are the names of things — real concrete
things more noticeably than abstractions. Grammar gets a bit shaky;
irregular verbs can be a problem, which is one of the many aspects that
prompt thoughts about growing grandchildren and how they will develop
and move on to greater competence, while Gran won't.
Of course sometimes 'they' are lost for words. It is really helpful (I
don't think) when presumably well-meaning but actually ignorant
acquaintances remark how they often forget names or words — it's part
of growing older. No, it damn well isn't — not this sort of loss of
words.
And me — the wordsmith — do I get lost for words? Not much, but I am
getting better at it! I mean that I am learning to let the words go, to
listen to the silence, to let the wordy thoughts run down, to meditate
or muse. But the words keep flowing, and (in common, I am told, with
many carers of people with aphasia) after 6 or 12 months I gradually
stopped feeling guilty about having retained some facility with words,
reading especially. Textbooks don't have a fancy Greek or Latin (or
what one of my teachers used to call a bastardised combination of both)
expression for loss of ability to take in words from written texts.
'Illiteracy' isn't classed as a medical problem — but loss of 'literacy' (which
dictionaries define to include both reading and writing) is a profound
problem, especially for those whose life and work was based on written
words.
So we are lost for words, you the reader and I, she and I. I am told
that many languages including ancient Greek have a proverb to the
effect that 'actions speak louder than words'. So that is the way we
go, separately and together, doing as well as speaking. We have been
challenged over the years about the importance of 'being' as well as or
rather than 'doing'. We are learning to go that way too.