Thanks for that Hope, a powerful sentiment. Even words in raw form as distinct components, rather than strung together as quotations, clever taglines or passages from a literary work of merit, hold so much power to influence the senses. Although, it has to be said, as a writer one becomes quite simply besotted with words, phraseology and the employment of language, when a piece of prose effectively represents a watercolour in words to you as the author/artist.
Is the pen mightier than the brush, absolutely not for they are truly comrades in arms? Are both mightier than the sword, most probably, in the way they can turn the tide of and shed a different light on momentous events, always an interpretation according to the eye of the beholder of course? After all what is a peace treaty but a body of words!
My own view is the pen is a more worthy as opposed to a mightier implement than the sword, but then again I also hold that opinion of a ploughshare as it helps sustain human kind in body, but returning to the topic in hand, I also absolutely love the sound of the spoken word ploughshare.
However, that is not meant as a diversionary tactic, my all time favourite word of words is:
Mellifluous: (of a sound) pleasingly smooth and musical to hear. As in "her low mellifluous voice" one could in fact happily apply that to ploughshare as both a soothing and harmonious sound when the word is enunciated.
Mellifluous is a combination of the
Late Latin words mel = honey and fluere = to flow which when amalgamated became the
Late Latin word mellifluous which then took on the English ending of –ous to better describe the phonetics to an English language reader/speaker in the late 15th Century.
In fact, more or less following William Caxton’s introduction of the printing press into England in 1476. Up to that point literary works had been written in what was known as
Middle English, one of the greatest exponents of
Middle English was Geoffrey Chaucer, best known today for
The Canterbury Tales.
However, post 1475 the arrival of the printing press began to standardise the English language, and a London-based form of English, known as
Chancery Standard became widely used in literature replacing
Middle English.
Among the most prominent works published in the 15th Century was
Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory printed by Caxton in 1485. A compilation of some French and English Arthurian Romances, was one of the earliest books printed in England, it became extremely popular and hugely influential in later revivals of interest in the Arthurian legends.
Amazing what associated knowledge can tumble out of the fact that a favourite word was finalised in the fifteenth century, anybody else care to volley a favourite word or expression back across the net. Tempus fugit chaps, tempus fugit!
Kind Regards Redbeck
Tristan and Isolde with the Potion - By Pre-Raphaelite artist, John William Waterhouse