I was preparing myself breakfast and was thinking about my food along with another blog topic or two and all that I was adding to those three eggs.  There was half a yellow onion, four toasted tortilla shells, Worcestershire sauce(or as one of my uncles calls it, “What’s this here sauce”), black pepper, Tapatío, sea salt, grated four part cheese, fresh chives and bazil and peppers and yellow and red cherry tomatoes.   Somewhere in all these thoughts the term “overindulge” popped into my skull.

Can you really overindulge?  When I thought of indulging, I thought that was an excess to an unhealthy extreme, let alone overindulging.  So here I figured I would look the words up.  I prefer to see how words were defined awhile ago in the 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language and then see if the words have changed in a current dictionary that would have “automobile” and “computer” in it. (You can now find the 1828 dictionary online for free here.)  Here you can see the first definition of the word in the 1828 dictionary means:

1. To permit to be or to continue; to suffer; not to restrain or oppose; as, to indulge sloth; to indulge the passions; to indulge pride, selfishness or inclinations.

and here you can see what the first definition of the word in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary says :

1 a : to give free rein to

b : to take unrestrained pleasure in : gratify

Now where am I going with this? I found that fully reading through both definitions of “indulge” still applied to every scenario I could think of, from food to play to wine to work to family to sex to exercise. When starting this blog I thought I would have more apposing definitions and had not fully thought out the word and how indulging can be a beneficial.

What really caught my attention though is how we define words and how we use words.

Should food or play or wine or work or family or sex or exercise ever be overindulged in?

There is not a bow to wrap this blog up in, but that is the way the cookie crumbles.

I overly recommend the American Dictionary of the English Language (1828 Edition)

I think of it as words that have not been diluted.

K, bye

Is having a second extra slice of cake on your birthday over indulging?