"The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they have been in"

Language is inherently slippery, charged with meanings shaped by countless contexts and voices before reaching any individual. Words, far from being neutral tools, are vessels that carry the intentions, inflections, and biases of all their previous speakers. Every utterance, every sentence, comes preconditioned by histories: cultural nuances, personal experiences, and the subtexts of those who have wielded them. When Dennis Potter suggests we "never know whose mouths [words] have been in", he is pointing towards the ambiguous lineage words possess.

Communication thus becomes an unpredictable exchange, laced with past associations and subtle distortions. Words might invoke emotion, memory, or prejudice unforeseen by their current user, because their meaning is never fully contained within the present conversation. Instead, each word echoes with the residue of previous uses, carrying connotations and implications sometimes far removed from the speaker's intent. Irony, sarcasm, propaganda, and even affection can attach themselves to the same vocabulary, shifting its effect unpredictably.

Such recognition can breed both caution and humility. No one wholly owns the language they use; what one intends to convey may arrive colored, misinterpreted, or even subverted, simply due to the prior "mouths" that have shaped those words. This reality complicates every sincere attempt at expression, especially in personal relationships, politics, or art, where exactitude is so often desired but rarely possible.

It is also a reminder of language’s living, evolving nature. Words, passed from mouth to mouth, retain traces of human complexity, misunderstandings, transformations, cultural shifts. They invite both creative play and misunderstanding, forging unexpected connections, but also perpetuating stereotypes or pain. Navigating this inherent uncertainty asks for empathy and awareness, acknowledging that our acts of communication are embedded within a larger, ongoing conversation that no one controls, and that meaning is never fixed but always contingent, provisional, and relational.