Word

The >>Word of the Day<< today over at dictionary.com is >>oblation<<.

>>Oblation<< comes from the past participle form of the Latin verb* >>offerre<< meaning >>to bring<<.

So, an oblation is an offering or a gift.

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* A Latin verb is traditionally cited by giving four forms, in this case: offero, offerre, obtuli, oblatum.

on Mar 22nd 2001, 02:07:31, Natasha Jordan wrote the following about

word

Think how much acceptance Mary showed when she said:

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

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And how much courage.

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

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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

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Words like winter snowflakes.

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

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?

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.

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

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

The web of words wraps round the whole wide world, concealing the secret numbers underneath.

1001 1001 0110 1001 1010 1001

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.)

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

Rotor is a fine palindrome, thought Frank Leigh Dearie as he ambled down the Lost Highway.

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.