A Few Words on Words

In the beginning was the word. The formation of consonants and vowels, shapes, lines, dots, and symbols…. Words are the structure of culture.

History becomes words trapped in dusty pages. Words cannot be trusted, they can be lies or truths… words are often misused and twisted into prayers and curses, invocations… evocations… words we think have power.

Abaracadabara.

 Words tumble and change their meaning with time. The lexicon is constantly evolving. The rules of grammar change, slang becomes accepted…silly once meant blessed, satellite meant bodyguard, the past tense of jump was once jamp.

 In Saxon times, as a greeting, people said wassail -- now it’s wassup.

A word must be commonly used by 300 people before it is accepted into the word bible. Words are not made by laws, kings or dictators. They come from the street and slide into our lives…  crunk… bahookie… a punk…a plank… a  hoodie, all these words once slang on the streets are now accepted in the oxford dictionary.

 Words are created to reflect the zeitgeist of the time i-tunes- i-pod – i-think –i-speak – i-am.

Words can turn you on.

A vocabulary is the set of words you know. By age five or six, an English-speaking child will know about 2,500–5,000 words. An average student learns some 3,000 words per year, or approximately eight words per day.

 The Inuit have 300 words for snow.

 There are five definitions of script… most simply it is just a piece of writing.

Every movie needs a script. Every life has a story. Lovers need poems, travelers need signposts and presidents need speeches that can move the masses with  powerful calls to action. We need you - for war - for peace - for taxes. And the people need words they can believe in.

The writing on the wall says it all, and word of mouth is still the best way to put the word out.

Silence is just a space waiting to be broken by words that are simply unspoken.