What’s In A Word?

Words have power. The pen is mightier than the sword. These are sayings meant to express the power that words have in our society. And they’re absolutely correct. It’s incredible that I can mash buttons on my keyboard to generate these sentences I am typing, and that somehow, ideas are conveyed from my brain to yours. All with the power of words.

But what are words, really? They are just groups of letters or symbols, groups of inkblots or pixels on a page. Or maybe sounds produced by vocal cords. A word does not have meaning, but it points to an idea which does. We can think of it using the…