Epeolatry: The English Word for the Worship of Words
On the power of words, how they shape and limit us, and humans who pursue them for a lifetime
It all starts with words. Warfare, protests, historical events, books, songs, emotions, love, hate, regret, anger, joy, fear, jealousy, confessions, making love, killing, dying, and, beyond all, life itself.
Everything lives with words, pursues a story, and ends with them. Not only for writers who spend their lives chasing words and breathing with them, but words are what make up the world, regardless of how we perceive it.
Even when one remains silent and appears calm, the mind continues its work by creating thoughts with words, much like groundwater running beneath the surface.
Thoughts comprise an intellectual world. Sentences are the building blocks of thoughts. And finally, words combine to form sentences. As a result, an intellectual world, or the home of thoughts, can be as vast as its vocabulary. As we use more diverse words, our thoughts and ideas will become more diverse and refined. That is why, according to many child psychologists, a key piece of advice is to encourage children to learn a diverse range of words, which can be accomplished by making them read a lot and talking with them generously.
Although words are the foundation of life, most of us find them extremely mundane because they never disappear or go anywhere. Words lose their enchantment because they never leave our lives. Just like seeing Michelangelo's masterpiece, the Statue of David every day would turn it into an ordinary object.
People like me, on the other hand, are drawn to words. We chase them, devoting the majority of our life energy to exploring the new worlds they can open up for us. We, word lovers, adore them so much that we play with them all day; we seek out interesting words in novels; we go over every word we use when writing stories, novels, or essays and place it in its proper place. Perhaps we should be considered collectors since we are collectors of words.
Who knows? Maybe years later, this newsletter will be appreciated as a collection of words. At the moment, I neither write for that purpose nor have a claim. The only purpose of my writing is that I am so eager to wonder about words and walk the little paths they make inside me. What is it if this isn't a form of word worship?
The English language has a special word that means the worship of words: Epeolatry
Epeolatry’s roots come from ancient Greek: "epos" (word) + "latry" (worship).
Ending this piece about words and an English word with a quote from Virginia Woolf, the great author of English, will certainly crown it. In her essay "On Craftsmanship," which also includes the only recording of her voice reaching us today, she says:
…But words do not live in dictionaries; they live in the mind. If you want proof of this, consider how often in moments of emotion when we most need words we find none. Yet there is the dictionary; there at our disposal are some half-a-million words all in alphabetical order. But can we use them? No, because words do not live in dictionaries, they live in the mind…
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I love that English has this word! I can’t believe I’ve never heard it before, but now I’m going to use it all the time!
I love this word too! It was fun to write about it. English is a deep and diverse language, I’m sure there are several hidden words waiting for us. Thank you Jillian!