I love words, comes from the love of books for sure. Yet I believe I got my love of books and words from my beloved Grandma, Florence. She taught us the importance of reading, books. She did so many wonderful things- she had a book(well many) notebooks filled with every title she read and scored it, plus she had notebooks for every Countdown program from episode one. I wish I had those notebooks however alas I don’t. I did, however, get a true treasure her scrabble board - more words and play.

The power of words in some many forms, from how they make you feel, what they do to you when said right, the tonality, the impact and influence, the power fo the wrong words, the expression, the history and their meaning all amazes me.

I discovered the work of words, their meaning and historical elements to them is called

etymology

.Also, beware well, this could go wrong if you misspell you could get a load of insects! So many heartwarming elements of etymology, the “borrowing “of words or “loan words” used across different languages using phonetics, phonology and historical references, letters and their placement. The significance of letters, words, language is used in my day job as a coach, consultant, NLP practitioner. This focus on words is can be a job- so a possibility here if all else fails?

When dave and I met part of our courtship (yes it was like an old movie!), we shared the love of words and one way of us connecting as we lived far apart was through daily word of the day texts. Dictiary.com had a word of the day and the first person to text a grammatically correct sentence with the said word was the winner- plus it connected us when apart and started that way to remove the awkward should I get in touch part! Anyway, I learned of my beloved (haha) competitive streak very early on as we would attempt to get these texts I early pre 7 am. Now Dave worked out that the word was published at 3 am and he used to set an alarm, write the sentence and text and go back to sleep. Yep, he sure did! and I still married him. We have played Scrabble on Grandmaas board for the past 15 years and have kept every scorecard too. The husband has his tactical scoring number way of playing and I play for the words - I always lose, I have the most interesting words, he plays for the score!

Right now we are betwixt Christmas and New Year

That odd period of slothness and lost time, what day is it again! The power of words gets me through. The listening to audiobooks when I hike, the journalling and writing for pleasure and work, the content creativity for work projects, the long conversations with Dave each day, chatting with the kids on facetime all based around words. My intentionality of words is greater as I get older. I love them. I enjoy them. I misuse them still. I get hurt by them even more.

• Do you consider your words?

• Are you more bothered about others words and or your own?

• How do you feel about words, language? relevant, important or insignificant?

I think my words are things that I would like to be known for. Aware of. Intentional. By doing so I believe that I will become better at listening to a bonus for sure.? As I ponder I may get Dave to restart word of the day, and have a game of Scrabble.

For more wonderfulness, this website is worthy of a look at https://www.etymonline.com