Daily Cascade

Words

Prompt: Words
“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”
J.K. Rowling, From Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Please, reflect on how words can enhance one's writing and ideas, and what do you think about the inventive usage of words?

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Sometimes, when facing a weird situation, I say to myself, "Only if I had the right word, for this." My grandmother, though, never thought too long as she had the words for everything, be it a curse. At times, she'd let her words and phrases loose, and then say with a happy laugh, "Great! I got that out of me!" I still wish I was just as comfortable and fearless with my words as my grandmother had been with hers.

I wish so because above everything else, words shape how we think and even how we feel. They give structure and nuance to everything and they teach us effective self-expression. This surely enhances our writing and speech, too. In the first place, a rich vocabulary can give a person the ability to think more precisely, define concepts, analyze ideas, and reason through our seemingly insolvable problems.

In writing, too, words are our best tools as they can cause and create emotions and offer us vivid images while doing so. Using the precise words adds depth and dimension to our pieces, be it fiction or non-fiction, and it a lets our readers feel immersed in our work.

Then, words are just as important, if not more so, in our communications with others. A well-chosen word can inspire, motivate, or persuade an audience. To tell the truth, this is not my strong point as it was my grandmother's. I'm just not as quick thinking and creative on the spot as she was.

Not only my grandmother was creative, but also she was inventive when it came to words. Her witty puns and her twisting of any phrase unexpectedly entertained all of us in the family and made us, the younger set, mind her words more than the attention we paid to other adults.

Similar to what I first noticed in my grandmother, some authors like Shakespeare have coined words and phrases we still use today. "Jealousy is the green-eyed monster," "in a pickle," "good riddance," "it's Greek to me" come to mind. Surely, Shakespeare wasn't the only inventive one. What about Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" and Norman Mailer's creation of "factoid" when he wrote about Marilyn Monroe, a word which we all use today!

Surely, over the years and in literature many authors have contributed to the language and usage with their playful or not-so-playful inventions. Word inventions such as those create a strong connection with the readers, through their humor, metaphor, and irony. And sometimes, as in Dr Seuss, playing on the sounds alone can attract attention and entertain especially the youngest readers. This is because thoughts and language expand through inventions with new concepts of our day like "self-care" and "going green".

As for me, I may not be able to imagine myself "riding on a beam of light" like Einstein did, but still, in my old age today, I can still recall and rejoice in my grandmother's inventiveness and ease with words and expressions.