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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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

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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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

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.)

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.

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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

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

1001 1001 0110 1001 1010 1001

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

(Mark Twain)

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

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

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

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

Think how much acceptance Mary showed when she said:

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