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Jesus Wept

When Australia was celebrating the bi-centenary of Captain Cook's arrival in what is now Sydney's Botany Bay, where he claimed ownership of this land mass on behalf of the British Empire, a gift was received from neighboring country New Zealand. It was three enormous letters, made, I think, from fiberglass. The letters read: I AM.

An amusing rivalry has long existed between the two countries. The receivers of the gift wondered how it should be taken. Was it a reference to Descartes' words "I think, therefore I am"? Or was it a snide reference to the self-centered egotism perceived by some to be an essential part of the Australian character? Were those New Zealanders being kind, or sarcastic?

"I am" is held by some to be both the shortest and the most meaningful sentence in the English language. It is certainly short; and it meets the technical criteria of a meaningful sentence, containing as it does both subject and predicate. As to meaning, surely anyone can see that standing alone as it does it cannot be anything but ambiguous. It begs the question altogether as to what the speaker is. Perhaps he means merely that he exists. Well, so does a stone: so what?

So it is with simple one-word answers to questions. According to Fowler, surely as as good a final authority as can be found, a sentence doesn't necessarily need to contain within itself both subject and predicate: each may be inferred as present in the sentence by means of implication. Thus "I", in response to the question "Who has borrowed my pen", meets the criteria. It borrows by implication the noun "pen" and the verb "borrow" from the question asked.

Therefore "I" must be as short a sentence as is possible. A single symbol, it is just as short as any punctuation mark, and as distinct from punctuation marks it is an actual word. The trouble with it is that standing alone as a sentence in its own right it contains no meaning at all.

"Jesus wept" must surely be the shortest meaningful, stand-alone sentence in the English language. Even someone unaware of who the Nazarene was will immediately infer from the sentence itself that "Jesus" must be a person's name; and everyone knows what "wept" means. And in our shared culture where everyone from devout Christians to the most skeptical atheist must have heard of Jesus and know what His name stands for, that evocative little sentence is redolent with meaning.

Learn more about this author, Bill Avent.
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