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.

“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.

The >>Word of the Day<< today over at dictionary.com is >>oblation<<.

>>Oblation<< comes from the past participle form of the Latin verb* >>offerre<< meaning >>to bring<<.

So, an oblation is an offering or a gift.

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* A Latin verb is traditionally cited by giving four forms, in this case: offero, offerre, obtuli, oblatum.

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

Think how much acceptance Mary showed when she said:

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

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

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

I think that Word is one of these strange softwares that can do anything except what you think it can do. It's not possible to write with this thing, but you can spend your day goofing with toolbars or including all types of spreadsheets or multimedia or even use it as the worst HTML-Editor ever.

I prefer ASCII, really.

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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

And then some more words come along and a paragraph is born.

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

We had words. Each and every evening.

Sometimes, when he stopped for beer after work, we had dishes and pots and food, too.

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Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.

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 – Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
 – An Essay on Criticism [1711], pt. II, l. 109

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.)