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.

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Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

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 – Horace (65-8 B.C.)
 – Epistles, bk. I, epistle xviii, l. 71

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?

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

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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]

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

Without another word spoken on either side, the lodger took from his great trunk, a kind of temple, shining as of polished silver, and placed it carefully on the table.

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.

mortar my words
with particles
prepositions
adverbs
and conjunctions

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

A word after a word after a word is power.

(Margaret Atwood)

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

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.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.

(John F. Kennedy)