As some of you know, my son was a barbarian for Halloween. (This is a Skultar the Barbarian costume, by the way, minus the Skultar face.) As you can tell from this picture, there is a certain amount of overap between a barbarian and a knight, at least to the untrained eye. So people kept asking him what he was, and he kept telling them that he was "a barbarian, but I don't have a beard." And people would think--you could practically hear them--what is that kid talking about?
What the kid was talking about was his new-found love of words. When he'd told me he wanted to be a barbarian, being a word-nerd and all, I'd started in on the etymology of the term. (This turned out to be spurious etymology, by the way.) I had been told that the word "barbarian" came from the word "barba" in Latin, which means beard, and that Romans had been clean-shaven, and had associated that state with being civilized. So their neighbors who wore beards were thought by them to be uncivilized, and the word for being bearded had become synonymous with being a savage.
What I love about the story, though, is that even a year or so ago, my son probably could not have cared less about acquiring new words or where they came from. He would have completely ignored me. I love how he's gotten fluent enough at reading that he wants to keep expanding his territory. I love how he's still so curious and excited about learning. This is a golden age, one where he loves discovering new vocabulary and talking about it. I'm hoping it's never going to end...