I’ve always been amazed by how stringing together letters can form so many different words, how putting those words together can lead to beautiful sentences, and how organizing those sentences can create wondrous prose. There’s something magical about it.
In some ways, I think it’s serendipitous how one finds the right words to place side by side. With all the synonyms of a word at your disposal, how can one choose what looks/sounds/feels/seems best?
For me, it’s usually how it rolls off the tongue as I say it out loud. Does it flow out silkily? Or is there a slight bump that tells me something’s off? But smoothness isn’t always a constant factor. Sometimes, I like the rhythm that comes out. When the message has to be terse, staccato is what I’m after.
But even individual words have their charm (regardless of their definitions). Luminous, ephemeral, and melancholy are just a few examples. On the flip side, some sound more ungainly than others. (I’m looking at you, cantankerous, lugubrious, and kwashiorkor!)
The same is probably true for words across all languages.
In The Great Passage, a Japanese film by Ishii Yuya that was screened at last year’s Eiga Sai, the main characters were trying to find the best way to define the word wonderful for the massive dictionary they were compiling. And one of them came up with this: “to get your question sated with an answer is full of wonder.” That’s an interesting way to put it.
Words, whether written or spoken, have so much potential to them. Potential for uplifting, potential for destroying, potential for comforting, potential for challenging, potential for connecting, potential for changing. How can one not even love words? You don’t even have to be a professional writer or a public speaker to wield that power. What we do with the words we express has a lot of impact, especially on those around us, whether we’re aware of it or not.
Proverbs 18:21 (ESV) captures the thought best:
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.
So true. So true.