word
/wəːd
/- He attempted to say a few things, but none of the noises actually turned into words let alone sentences.
- What kind of a person even gives that sort of nonsense the time of day, let alone writes six-hundred-odd words about it?
- In her short time in this organized hell, Cassie understood the meaning of the word alone.
Synonyms
- All I will say is that this movie was true in the basic sense of the word.
- Nancy spoke specifically about the words offered by the senior minister at her church.
- The Ministry of Justice subsequently released a statement condemning the words of Grigorov.
- She later claimed that the press had distorted her words and repudiated the statement.
Synonyms
- No matter how many experts you throw at them, they won't believe a word spoken by them.
- Steve's unchanged expression showed that he didn't believe a word Miles had just spoken.
- The people who know me well don't believe a word of what is written by the media.
- After receiving a complaint we went down and had words with them.
- When we got into a scuffle he had words with the both of us, but said nothing about the penalties he had given away.
- I also had words with my manager, as he had changed the roster for next week without my consultation.
Synonyms
- They reclaim a union between word and deed, utterance and action.
- The crucial distinction between the fifties and sixties lay in word, not in deed.
- But our past is fraught with his infidelity in word, in deed and most likely in his heart and mind.
- He gave her directions onto a narrow winding road, and told her to drive down it until he gave her the word to stop.
Synonyms
- Mercury received word from Intel last week that the engineering firm is wanted on the job immediately.
- You should know I live in a small community and that word travels fast around here.
- His father said he passed word from a dispatcher to his son that they should stay low and that firefighters were working their way up.
Synonyms
- She was condemned on her word alone without proof and lacked defense counsel.
- Sex offences can be difficult to prove or disprove as it often comes down to one person's word against the other's.
- It's the attendant's word against that of a patient who can only communicate using ACC.
- We can only do our best to hold the administration to its word.
- When the waitress arrives, Beanie's mother remains true to her word and orders only coffee.
- It is important that they be so, for science needs good communicators whose word can be trusted.
- What the audience sees and hears in the film is the first time an actor has performed and uttered those words.
- When you see the casting tapes first it is weird because you are watching people speaking your words against a white plain background.
- Performed without words, it is a deeply elemental, emotive and darkly comic piece of theatre.
Synonyms
- A strongly worded letter is to be sent to the county council asking for an explanation.
- I ask the nurse for a scribbling pad and a pen and write out a carefully worded resignation.
- We worded a letter in such a way that it was OK for them to let our citizens out.
Synonyms
Phrases
at a word
be as good as one's word
have a word
have a word in someone's ear
in other words
in so many words
in a word
keep one's word
a man/woman of his/her word
(on/upon) my word
of few words
put something into words
put words into someone's mouth
spread the word
take someone at their word
take the words out of someone's mouth
take someone's word (for it)
too —— for words
waste words
the Word (of God)
word for word
word gets (or goes) around
word of honour
word of mouth
the word on the street
words fail me
a word to the wise
Phrasal verbs
word up
Derivatives
wordage
- O'Dell wrote it in a fund-raising letter so its veracity and exact wordage are not in doubt.
- He was once commissioned to write a history of West Indies cricket, but got so immersed in the research that he overran the wordage by several thousand.
- It's not that I don't have the vocabulary - I'm actually pretty proud of my wordage - but I'm just not adept at using those words effectively.
wordlessly
/ adverb ...- He took the shovel from me and wordlessly filled the hole in, even spread some snow overtop to make it look undisturbed.
- Afterwards he went around, palm up, wordlessly asking for something, anything.
- Nearby, a woman and her daughter clasped each other, crying wordlessly.
wordlessness
- My problem is that the bouts of wordlessness are getting more frequent, and it leaves me wondering if it will it be worth carrying on.
- One can never really write about suffering; and death, by definition, takes us into the realm of wordlessness.
- First, the wordlessness of the film clips has an extraordinary, incalculable effect.
Origin
Old English, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch woord and German Wort, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin verbum 'word'.
Word is ultimately related to Latin verbum, the source of verb (Late Middle English), proverb (Middle English) the ‘pro’ here having the sense ‘put forth’, and verbal (Late Middle English). ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ are the first words of the Gospel of John, which continues: ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…full of grace and truth.’ To eat your words is first found in a 1571 translation of a work by the French Protestant theologian John Calvin: ‘God eateth not his word when he hath once spoken.’ A word in your ear is of similar vintage, coming from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing: ‘Come you hither sirra, a word in your ear, sir’. People sometimes say a word to the wise or a word to the wise is enough to imply that only a hint or brief explanation is required. The wording of the first English use, at the start of the 16th century, was ‘Few words may serve the wise’, although the concept was expressed much earlier than that in the Latin saying verbum sapienti sat est, sometimes shortened to verb sap.