Word

mortar my words
with particles
prepositions
adverbs
and conjunctions

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.

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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

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

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

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Words like winter snowflakes.

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

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.

A word after a word after a word is power.

(Margaret Atwood)

The old folks say that the spoken word is the garment of the soul. What man of true wit would clothe his beloved in filth and tatters?

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

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?

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)

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

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.)