Words

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. HE was with God in the beginning." John 1:1 NIV Study Bible

I'm not going to claim to be a biblical scholar of any sort, and the original interpretation of this particular verse doesn't particularly interest me in the least. I only brought it out to make a point.

Specifically: "The Word was God." For a writer to not have a one-to-one relationship with words that borders on worship is simply unfathomable to me. And yet, I've met some who claim that they are writers decry that they hate the dictionary. Frankly, I can pore over the dictionary for hours on end. Not so I can memorize new words or even to learn anything specifically, but the ins and outs of word structure simply fascinate me. The sounds of words, the prefixes, the suffixes, the roots, the way words have evolved in usage over time.

Oh sure, we all start out life (at least those who were burdened with the tediousness called "public school") with at least a moderate dislike to it. Remember all those times you asked "How do I spell X word?" and you were told to look it up in the dictionary? Well, (and repeat after me) how in the world am I supposed to find it if I can't spell it? Not to mention those tedious tests which the schools had along the lines of "Would you find word X between words A and B or between words W and Z?" And what the hell is a schwa (that upside down e thingie)? Does it really help with pronunciation or confuse the crap out of people? I vote for the latter.

But, if you can take out all the BS, all the nonsense that has been forcefed you through the years about vocabulary tests (whether or not "schwa" was one of the words) and skip the currency converters and just get down to the nitty gritty of the origins and meanings of words you'll find not just history, but, perhaps, a measure of religion as well.