My Latin master (I wasn’t very good) used to love the word magnopere (greatly) which rolled off his whiskey soaked tongue as he said it. Most any writer you choose to talk to, or anyone who works with words, will have their favourite sounds. But the true wordsmith loves dictionaries. They read them for pleasure and high on the list of best dictionaries are those that have the history of the usage of the word, derivation and quotes. These facts about a word, when it was first used, how, who by and from what origins it emerged into the language, are layers of meaning that enrich its usage. To know that a word like ‘simply’ or ‘nice’ is used today in a completely different way to its first sightings in English adds a piquancy to every use you make of it; like your secret language.
In exactly the same way science is teaching us about the language of the Universe and we are seeing things in very different lights to those of our ancestors. The layers of meaning run deep and far and most exciting of all is that we seem to run with them.
Life is a language, and with every passing day we learn more about her words, their origins and how they came into being along with us. Its a wonderful dictionary to appear in.