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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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]

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.

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Words like winter snowflakes.

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 – Homer (c. 700 B.C.)
 – The Iliad, bk. III, l. 222

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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

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

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.

We had words. Each and every evening.

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

The word is powerless yet powerful. The word can be a mere 8 bits, or the flame that burns a city to the ground. Words sting, caress, re-assure, and destruct.

We become wordsmiths innately, learning language before we learn to walk or talk. And still, we continue our development, our love affair with words, until the day we die.

'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.

Words are like prodigies. They may want to stay inside where it is safe and warm but they'll never live if they never play outside...and find themselves lost in the cold.

Think how much acceptance Mary showed when she said:

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

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)