Word

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.

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

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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

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.

We had words. Each and every evening.

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

In the beginning was the word, and the word was 32 bits.

The word on my mind right now is >>weekend<<. It's only a few hours away!

I can't wait to get away from this office!!

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We shall never understand one another until we reduce the language to seven words.

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 – Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)
 – Sand and Foam [1926]

Isn't it weird that words work as well as they do? Think about it.

“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.

... words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, they slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe...

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

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.