andamu

I love words.
Not with a fetish-like obsession, or an all consuming passion, you understand. Nevertheless I delight in words. They are magic, containing hidden secrets and beauty on several different levels.

The obvious is the meaning of the word itself, which could be either obvious or obscured, readily available or requiring a commitment. This is of course related to context. (Ha! You did not really believe that I would not sneak in my hobby horse somewhere, did you?)
The accessibility is dependent on whether the individual is familiar with the words to which it relates, or from which it is derived; alternatively whether the context in which it is used adequately reveals the meaning.

A second level is the sound of the word. Now, some words are onomatopoeic and the aptness of their sounds as they relate to their definitions is clear. But the sound of every word has an internal beauty, integral to itself as well. Here context proves a hindrance. It is tough to listen to a word objectively, independent of its meaning. Say something simple like "simple" fifteen times in a row, more or less without inflection. Listen to the sounds it makes and notice how, after repetition, it almost seems to become odd, and devoid of meaning.
For a better illustration of the way context ruins the appreciation of sound, take the word gonorrhea. I wonder how many of you would be able to divorce it from its meaning to actually hear its sound?

A third level of beauty resides in the appearance of the word. Again, because of context it is not easy to appreciate this objectively without tying it to the meaning of the word, but somehow it is less difficult than hearing in isolation.
Of course, text is frequently turned into art through the use of elegant fonts, calligraphy and graphic design, but I am talking about the simple sequence of letters, the way in which they appear on a plain page.
Have you ever become stuck while writing a really simple word like "really," and for a few moments were unable to think of how to write it, then started to write a few versions, erasing each in turn because "it just doesn't look right?" If you have, then you have some idea of what I am talking about.

Of course, I am totally weird in that I can get lost in the beauty of the patterns the blank spaces between words and paragraphs make on the page of a book, so don't feel bad if you have no idea what I am talking about.

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Coming Soon: Episode Two, "Big Words"