Give a word

give the word

give (someone) the word

give the word

Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, or visit the webmaster’s page for free fun content.

Link to this page:

• ▲
• give the benefit of the doubt
• give the devil his due
• give the devil his/her due
• give the eye
• give the finger
• give the game away
• give the gate
• give the glad eye
• give the go-by
• give the heave-ho
• give the lie to
• give the lie to (something)
• give the lie to something
• give the lie to, to
• give the mitten
• give the nod to
• give the raspberry
• give the shaft
• give the shake
• give the shirt off back
• give the shirt off one’s back
• give the shirt off one’s back, to
• give the show away
• give the slip
• give the wall
• give the word
• give them hell
• give thought to (something)
• give tit for tat
• give to
• give to understand
• give tongue
• give tongue to
• give trouble
• give under threat of
• give up
• give up (something) as a bad job
• give up as lost
• give up for dead
• give up for lost
• give up hope
• give up on (someone or something)
• give up the cause
• give up the fight
• give up the ghost
• give up the ghost, to
• give up the struggle
• Give us the tools, and we will finish the job
• Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.
• give vent to
• give vent to something
• ▼

• ▲
• give the show away
• give the shudders
• give the shudders
• give the shudders
• give the silent treatment
• give the slip
• give the slip
• give the slip
• give the slip
• give the slip
• give the someone back of their hand
• give the stink eye
• give the third degree
• give the thumbs down
• give the thumbs up
• give the time of day
• give the time of day
• give the time of day
• give the time of day
• give the time of day
• give the time of day
• give the wall
• give the what for
• give the what-for
• give the whole show away
• give the whole show away
• give the whole show away
• give the whole show away
• give the whole show away
• give the willies
• give the word
• give the works
• give the works
• give the works
• give the works
• give the works
• give their all
• give their best
• give their cards
• give their cards
• give their due
• give their due
• give their due
• give their due
• give their ear
• give their ear to
• give their ears
• give their eye teeth
• give their eye teeth for
• give their eyeteeth
• give their eyeteeth for
• give their ground
• give their head
• give their head
• give their head
• give their heads for the washing
• give their lives
• give their love to
• give their mind to
• give their minds to
• give their name to
• ▼

• Terms of Use
• Privacy policy
• Feedback
• Advertise with Us

Copyright © 2003-2020 Farlex, Inc

All content on this website, including dictionary, thesaurus, literature, geography, and other reference data is for informational purposes only. This information should not be considered complete, up to date, and is not intended to be used in place of a visit, consultation, or advice of a legal, medical, or any other professional.

Give a Common Word the Spell

The medium of poetry is language, our common property. It belongs to no one and to everyone. Poetry never entirely loses sight of how the language is being used, fulfilled, debased. We ought to speak more often of the precision of poetry, which restores the innocence of language, which makes the language visible again. Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.

Poetry charts the changes in language, but it never merely reproduces or recapitulates what it finds. The lyric poem defamiliarizes words, it wrenches them from familiar or habitual contexts, it puts a spell on them. The lyric is cognate with those childish forms, the riddle and the nursery rhyme, with whatever form of verbal art turns language inside out and draws attention to its categories. As the eighteenth-century English poet Christopher Smart put it, freely translating from Horace’s Art of Poetry:

It is exceedingly well
To give a common word the spell
To greet you as intirely new.

The poem refreshes language, it estranges and makes it new. (“But if the work be new, / So shou’d the song be too,” Smart writes.) There is a nice pun on the word spell in Smart’s Horatian passage since, as tribal peoples everywhere have believed, the act of putting words in a certain rhythmic order has magical potency. That power can only be released when the spell is chanted aloud. I’m reminded, too, that the Latin word carmen, which means “song” or “poem,” has attracted English poets since Sidney because of its closeness to the word charm, and, in fact, in the older Latin texts it also means a magic formula, an incantation meant to make things happen, to cause action (Andrew Welsh, Roots of Lyric). And a charm is only effective when it is spoken or sung, incanted.

The lyric poem separates and uproots words from the daily flux and flow of living speech but it also delivers them back—spelled, changed, charmed—to the domain of other people. As Octavio Paz puts it in The Bow and the Lyre:

Two opposing forces inhabit the poem: one of elevation or uprooting, which pulls the word from the language: the other of gravity, which makes it return. The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is also reading and recitation: participation. The poet creates it; the people, by recitation, re-create it. Poet and reader are two moments of a single reality.

Poet and author Edward Hirsch has built a reputation as an attentive and elegant writer and reader of poetry. Over the course of many collections of poetry and criticism, and the long-running “Poet’s Choice” column in the Washington Post, Hirsch has transformed the quotidian into poetry in his own work.