words, words, words

“…

Shakespeare had words, words, words,

Poe had bells, bells, bells,

…”

That is a part of a poem written by my loved one a few years ago. I am sorry, but I won’t reproduce the entire poem here; it belongs to him (I don’t even know if he knows that I kept a copy). I just wanted to start with it because “words, words, words” seemed like such a great title. I can’t even think of the word “word” and not think of his poem, which he read at several poetry readings.

We have an intranet at work. Very few people have access to the regular internet. I think the company feels that we will be more productive if we do not have the distraction of personal email at work (it’s probably also to keep out viruses and hackers, but we all choose to believe the policy is cruelly directed at us lowly employees). The email idea is not an effective one, since we all simply email each other on the intranet. The office can be absolutely silent, everyone working diligently, typing furiously, when suddenly there are the pings of multiple emails arriving. Six people simultaneously burst into choked laughter (plus 15 others in other areas of the building). Since we are only supposed to use the intranet email for work purposes, the content of the emails are generally biting commentaries on work related topics or gossip thinly disguised as “FYI’s” or “heads up!” We also have word contests. Since we write published products, we agree on specific words or phrases to attempt to slip by the editors. The rule is that they must fit into the product legitimately. We can go sometimes for several weeks or months before someone gets it past the editors and we can move on to something else. The current word is obstreperous. I have not won one since “various nefarious,” but if everything goes well by Tuesday I might have obstreperous (it’s already made it through the first and second edits). We also have the standing challenges of writing a paragraph without using the letter “a” and four or five word alliteration; I had four nouns in a row starting with “s,” but it didn’t count because it was a proper name.

It might seem odd that someone who has always worked with words, in one language or another, writes and reads for fun as well, but I love words. I don’t, however, do the word of the day thing. I like to stumble across my new words as I go.

When my daughter was learning Latin, we did have a Latin phrase of the week at home. Our favorite was “ab asino lanam” which means colloquially “you can’t get blood from a stone.” Literally, it is more like “you can’t get wool from an ass.” Naturally, my daughter got the giggles from this – how often in catholic school do you get to say, “ass?”

So, I’ll leave you with my favorite…”vulneratus non victus” or “bloodied but unbowed” or more literally, “wounded but not conquered.”

Have a particularly verbose day! 🙂