the.com/word
the smallest unit of meaning we'd happily start a war over
means A single distinct unit of language, made of sounds or letters, that carries meaning and can stand on its own.
from From Old English 'word,' with relatives spread across the Germanic family — German 'Wort,' Dutch 'woord,' Old Norse 'orð.' Scholars trace it back further to a Proto-Indo-European root '*wer-,' meaning 'to speak' or 'to say,' which is also thought to lie behind Latin 'verbum' (giving us 'verb' and 'verbal') and Greek 'rhetor' (the speaker, root of 'rhetoric'). So the word for 'word' has, fittingly, been spoken in some form for as long as we can reconstruct speech itself.
- longest one
- a protein name with 189,819 letters
- oldest written
- some traced back over 5,000 years
- shortest
- a single letter still says plenty
- vanishing act
- a language loses one every two weeks
word magazine — founded 1993, lifestyle publication covering music, fashion, and culture
password — authentication method using sequences of characters, standardized since 1960s computing
word of mouth — marketing phenomenon where customers share recommendations, estimated 92% trust it per nielsen