'Joy at a Word Because It Is Just What It Is'

I remember one afternoon as a boy while in the neighbor’s back yard falling in love with the word of. A common preposition suddenly seemed intriguing, like a pretty girl you’ve known all your life. English is dense with such small words, known early by most native speakers, that are notoriously difficult to define yet even more difficult to live without, assuming you wish to be reasonably articulate. The OED gives dozens of shades of meaning. The most familiar is probably this: “Of origin or source. Indicating the thing, place, or person from which or whom something originates, comes, or is acquired or sought.” 

However, it was the sound of of I swooned over. The spelling has nothing to do with its pronunciation. It ought to be pronounced like off but it rhymes with love and dove. The o is almost uh, a place holder when we’re looking for an answer. The f is a v. Mouth open, a tremor in the throat, then upper teeth on lower lip. It’s a reassuring sound, like a productive beehive or a barber working in the next room.

 

Isaac Waisburg of IWP Books has introduced me to a writer who would likely understand the seductiveness of words-as-sounds, abstracted from sense. C.E. Montague (1867-1928) was an English journalist who wrote novels and essays. Isaac has posted a book published two years after Montague's death, A Writer’s Notes on His Trade. The title of the first essay is taken from Hamlet: “Words, Words, Words.”   

 

“In youth you easily fall in love with words, written and spoken. You come, like other lovers, to feel an unreasoned sensuous thrill of joy at a word because it is just what it is – the sound of it and the look of it on a page – as a child’s mind thrills at the touch of fur because it is sleek and at that of a file because it is not. Apart from the interest of their use in any particular place, such words as ‘burnish,’ ‘crozier,’ ‘lustre,’ ‘beatitude,’ ‘dawn’ become enamouring objects, with glowing hearts of their own, like red wine or rubies.”

 

No two people will share identical lists of such words, and to some the proclivity is madness. I note that “enamouring” is good word and an effective way to characterize those stricken with word-love. Montague continues:

 

“A sculptor alone in his studio will fondly stroke a lump of unworked marble or bronze; he can doat on its qualities. A writer or a good reader will do much the same: his mind will finger single words and caress them, adoring the mellow fullness or granular hardness of their several sounds, the balance, undulation or trailing fall of their syllables, or the core of sunlike splendour in the broad, warm, central vowel of such a word as ‘auroral.’ Each word’s evocative value or virtue, its individual power of touching springs in the mind and of initiating visions, becomes a treasure to revel in.”

 

One needn’t be Alexander Theroux or the author of Finnegans Wake – or their readers – to appreciate the magic and music of language. It’s a gift. Polonius asks in Act II, Scene 2: “What do you read, my lord?” Hamlet replies: “Words, words, words.”