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.

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.

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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

Which is more useful to you: a dictionary that tells you how to use a word or a dictionary that tells you how a word is used?

Think how much acceptance Mary showed when she said:

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

A word has the power to define, to bind, to create, to destroy. Truely, a poet has power undreamt of by kings.

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

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

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

We had words. Each and every evening.

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

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

mortar my words
with particles
prepositions
adverbs
and conjunctions

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