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Words are like... 3

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tgreer

tgreer

Programmer
Oct 4, 2002
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The recent conversation about what words MEAN in another thread made me clarify my thoughts about what words ARE.

In this thread, I don't want to re-hash that, but want instead a collection of thoughts about what words are like, or quotes from writers who gave their thoughts on the matter.

For me, words are like "people". They are born, grow through unique experiences, and die. Each has a personality, and is an individual.

This passage (about PEOPLE, not WORDS) from Neal Stephenson's "The System of the World", for me could equally well describe people or words:

"I was afraid you might have grown weary of slave-tales. I fear they are repetitious. 'I was siezed by raiders from the next village...traded to the tribe across the river...marched to the edge of the great water, marked with a hot iron, put aboard ship, dragged off of it half dead, now I chop sugar cane.'"

"All human stories are in some sense repetitious, if you boil them down so far. Yet people fall in love."

"What?"

"They fall in love, Dappa. With a particular man or woman, and no one else. Or a woman will have a baby, and love that baby forever...no matter how similar its tale might seem to those of other babies."

"You are saying", Dappa said, "that we make connections with other souls, despite the samenes--"

"There is no sameness. If you looked down upon the world from above, like an albatross, you might phant'sy there was some sameness among the people crowding the land below you. But we are not albatrosses, we see the world from ground level, from within our own bodies, through our own eyes, each with our own frame of references, which changes as we move about, and as others move about us. This sameness is a conceit of yours, an author's hobgoblin, something you fret about in your hammock late at night."

"In truth, I have my own cabin, and do my fretting in a bed nowadays."
Click to expand...

Please don't respond with a DEBATE about this (we've already done that in another thread). Respond with a "Words are like...[something]", with a reference or quote to illustrate.

Thomas D. Greer

Providing PostScript & PDF
Training, Development & Consulting
 
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I generally meet words in a dictionary. People, with histories, I meet through business or interaction at a social level.

Words are like, well words really :)

a requisite for communication more than rubbing one's tummy to indicate hunger.

As to what words mean, that's a journey that each of us must take, enter poetry and literature ... now its subjective

my €0.02
--Paul

cigless ...
 
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Tsk, tsk. Pay attention!

Please don't respond with a DEBATE about this (we've already done that in another thread). Respond with a "Words are like...[something]", with a reference or quote to illustrate.
Click to expand...

Here's another example: words are like WEAPONS:

Proverbs 12:18 "There is that speaketh rashly like the piecings of a sword..."



Thomas D. Greer

Providing PostScript & PDF
Training, Development & Consulting
 
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Joseph Joubert: "Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear."

Alexander Pope: "Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found."

??



 
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Words are like, a great, like method of like communication when they are like, used properly. Um, that's um pretty much ummm all I have to um say on that matter.

Words are like sustenance:
Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords. ~Robert Louis Stevenson
Click to expand...

Words are like nature:
Words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Im memoriam A.H.H.," 1850
Click to expand...

~Thadeus
 
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A word is the ultimate example of that which is greater than the sum of its parts.

Put a few seemingly unrelated letters together, in a certain order, and what can emerge is flood of emotion and memory.

Good Luck
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words are like ... keys to a database known as a lexicon
 
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Words are like tiny, colorful tiles. Put them in a big pile and they look interesting, but don't mean anything. Sort them by similar characteristics and you can learn a lot about them, but they still don't do much. But when put together by a master craftsman, a beautiful mosaic appears.

Tracy Dryden

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard. [dragon]
 
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Words are like pieces of a puzzle - sometimes you gotta pound on 'em a bit to make 'em fit

Rgds, Geoff

Three things are certain. Death, taxes and lost data. DPlank is to blame

Please read FAQ222-2244 before you ask a question
 
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words are like letters, put in a special order with some vowels and consonants and stuff

Steve
 
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Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

A word is like a sparrow--once out, it is out for good (unknown)

A word is like fashionable real estate: it can only last so long before overexposure and social climbing ruin it. (
A word is like a nest, and the meaning is the bird. (
[cheers] & all the best.
 
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A word is like a sparrow--once out, it is out for good

Sounds like a translation of a Russian adage, except that in the Russian adage it would be more like
"A word is unlike a sparrow - once out, it is out for good", or "A word is not a sparrow - if flied away, you cannot catch it". Meaning that you still have a chance to catch that same sparrow - but not a word.
 
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I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible."
Jane Austen

Thanks!
Elanor
 
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Is that a European (Russian) sparrow or an African sparrow?

~Thadeus
 
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Is that a European (Russian) sparrow or an African sparrow?

Erm... Why does it make a difference or otherwise what are you talking about?
 
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The reference is from the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (one of my favorites). King Arthur must answer three questions in order to cross the Bridge of Death.

Bridgekeeper: What... is your name?
King Arthur: It is 'Arthur', King of the Britons.
Bridgekeeper: What... is your quest?
King Arthur: To seek the Holy Grail.
Bridgekeeper: What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
King Arthur: What do you mean? An African or European swallow?

And the answer is.....

Susan
"'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'"
- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lost Road
 
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