Word

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.

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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]

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.

A word after a word after a word is power.

(Margaret Atwood)

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.)

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.

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

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

(Mark Twain)

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?

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

Words are the best toys you can give your brain.

We had words. Each and every evening.

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