An Occasional Word
It is no secret that I am a word person. I have no words to describe how words intrigue me, draw me, inspire, entertain, and confuse me. I love to investigate all kinds of wordage--their meanings, both their denotations and their connotations.
My word! The word word speaks broad meaning. You can give your word as a promise, to assure someone. Or you can speak a word of caution or advice. You should keep your word, in the first case, and you should limit your word in the second. People will depend on your word if you don’t break it, but they will ignore you if your outpouring of words is too numerous, too critical or bossy, or too insignificant. You must be a man or woman of your word, standing on that word, and be as good as your word. You must never break your word.
If you are quoting an expert, be sure to do it word for word rather than in so many words, or you’ll mislead somebody. If you take the words right out of someone’s mouth, your relationship might be very close and understanding. If you hang on somebody’s words, you could be in an unbalanced relationship.
You could be a wordsmith who enjoys subtle wordplay, arranges wording in word processing, or plays word square or does crossword puzzles. You could read the wonderful words of Wordsworth. You could be wordless, which I am not. You could have a brain-lesion problem called alexia that makes you word blind, so you can’t read, and that would be torture. You could look up the 100 most beautiful words in the English language at this linked site.
You could read the word of God. You could see that it is the living word, and in the book of John, you could learn how the Word became flesh in the person of Jesus.
Words have great power, and that’s why the pen is mightier than the sword. But in a word, all this utterance is just so many words.
*For much of this word, I had the help of Webster. And the picture comes from this site: www.bbc.co.uk/
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