Loss is a four-letter word that describes one of the most tragic things that can happen to anyone. It can make you commit suicide after a long grief, or it might not affect you at all. A loss can be from losing a wad of paper to losing your best friend. The word “loss” is comprehended differently by different people, which would have various affects on each person. It might just mean losing something, or it might mean something deeper than losing. Dictionary definitions are not always correct. There is no clear way to explain the exact definition of loss; people’s definitions would depend on their experience of loss, types of loss they experienced, what they think loss is or is not, and their thoughts on origin of the loss.
The official or the dictionary meaning of loss is “an amount or number lost.” This is partially true, because in some situations, failure to win, gain, or obtain is counted as a loss. For example, Jae Joon Jung, an arcade game user, thinks losing is loss. He said, “Every time I lose a game, the computer puts down one ‘lost’ for my ID. That is failing to obtain victory, which is loss. Failing to win so many times would depress me, so I think loss never affects my life in a positive way.” Another person had a similar idea to Jae Joon. Yun-Hee Lee, a student in a Korean school said, “If you fail to earn money, it means you have to use the money you have. Then you lose the amount you use for that day.” These replies show that the dictionary definition of loss can be a person’s own definition of the depressing four-letter word.
The word that describes action of loss, “lost,” for example, has a wide area of meanings, because people use the word in very many situations. The definition of loss depends on what the person is trying to say. For instance, if someone says, “We loss (it should be lost, but the person did not notice the error) touch for ten years (Yahoo Answers),” that means that this person had not contacted the person he tried to contact for ten years. If someone says, ‘We lost a good friend today (Sportbikes.com),” that usually means that the friend has passed away (not always though; loss can mean betrayal in this quote also). “Lost Money (Cashunclaimed)” can mean two or more things. Either the person does not know where the money is, ore the person has his/her money taken. Loss can mean a death of a person, a verb used to explain that something did not happen, and a word that describes a situation when something cannot be found.
Personal definition of loss can depend on the person’s opinion on what is the most important to them. Hye-In Park, a fifteen-year old girl said, “The meaning of true loss to me is when a friend dies or turns his/her back on me. To me, friends are one of the essential groups of people in life, and I think it would be a major loss to lose a friend. Loss is when you lose something valuable, isn’t it?” On the other hand, Min-Soo Kang, another game user, said, “Loss, to me, is something like losing my pocket money that is worth using for one month. Think of how you can spend that money! It would be a terrible loss to buy nothing and lose those valuable papers.” These two people understand loss as losing a valuable possession or a person. This idea is one of the majorities people comprehend as loss.
Whether people like it or not, loss can occur anytime in any place. Loss can be occurred by one’s clumsiness or by a failure to remember where one’s property is. If one is clumsy, one would leave an object anywhere without any thoughts. Later, one would look for that object and will not be able to remember where it is. Does this situation only count for loss of an object? The answer is no, because one can lose a friend through clumsiness too. One can be clumsy enough to say words that have a lot of impact to his/her friends, such as a critical insult that involves physical appearance. If that happens, it is most likely for one to lose the friend he/she said it to, and that is a loss. Forgetfulness is another major problem causing factor that makes people lose their possessions. For example, a student put an essay that was worth ten days of work in her folder. Afraid that someone might take it, she put the folder nearby a corner inside of her locker. When the due date arrived, the student panics because her folder is not in her bag, nor at her house. Unfortunately, she had to give up looking for her project and had to get a zero for the grade. When she cleans out her locker, she finds the work almost buried deeply in the locker and finally remembers that she had put the paper in there then. But there is no use; she has already “lost” her grade because of her short term memory. She would have a zero for the loss of the hard work.
Loss can be losing anything, not just an amount or number of losing something. Even the dictionaries cannot define loss in every single way. Because of this wide area of interpretation of loss, it is hard to know what the true definition of loss is. It can mean just losing an object to some people. It might mean more to other people; it depends, but none of them are wrong. The “real” definition of loss, nobody knows and will not know.
