Word

“Be careful what you say—you may have to eat your words.”

I don’t think so much about eating my words as about wearing them. When someone sees me, the words come back to haunt like a miasma around me. No matter how colourful my dress, bad words turn everything grey and muddy brown.

LI

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

--The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
(trans. Edward Fitzgerald, 1st ed.)

Words derive their meaning from the surrounding words, just as human beings derive their meaning from interacting with other humans around them.

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There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.


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 – Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
 – The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain [1952], st. I

on Mar 22nd 2001, 02:07:31, Natasha Jordan wrote the following about

word

Think how much acceptance Mary showed when she said:

»Let it be done to me according to thy word.«

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And how much courage.

I bought one of those Word-A-Day calendars to improve my vocabulary for college.

reify – to regard or treat (an abstraction) as if it had concrete or material existence.

Have you ever noticed that the only difference between »word« and »weird« are the vowels?

'Right again, quite right,' said Mr Swiveller, 'caution is the word, and caution is the act.'

Words beginning with the »sn« sound in English are often unpleasant: snide, snob, snigger, sneer, snicker, snub, snert, snotty, snippy, snit, snarl, snore, sneak, snag. »Snow« is a word over which there is debate and even an annual change of heart. The first snowfall is almost always welcomed. Christmas snow is considered magical. But too much of a good thing for too long and March blizzards push »snow« into line with the rest of the »sn« words.

Spaces define which letters go together to make up a word.

My favourite word in the English language is »language«. However, if you gave me a slightly larger set of words to choose from I might have more difficulty expressing a preference.

Rotor is a fine palindrome, thought Frank Leigh Dearie as he ambled down the Lost Highway.

There is a purity in words that cannot be sullied by their use.

A man of words and not of deeds
Is like a garden full of weeds.