Glassable, she said with a definite flip of her six-year old blonde curls. It’s just glassable. Seated on the floor with a bevy of kindergartners and first graders in a creative writing workshop, I had asked them about the things they treasured most. Rose–I’ll call her Rose–had just identified a glass figurine of a collie dog that stood atop her dresser. She named its colors, the way one leg curled up underneath it, and then she frowned. It’s the frown of one who is trying desperately–on the spot–to retrieve the right word. Just the right word to name just the right thing.

I had learned to bite my tongue, not to interject with possibilities like fragile or delicate. And sure enough, within seconds her brow softened, her eyes sharpened, and she burst forth with glassable! Her fellow writers looked on with assurance. Clearly, it was the just right word for all.

Twenty some years later, I cannot pass a glass vase or candlestick or figurine without inwardly proclaiming It’s just glassable. That’s what it is–glassable. 

Don’t get me wrong. I love the written word, dearly. But there is something akin to an out-of-body experience for me when certain words are spoken.

The beauty and magic of some words are unparalleled. Take limerence, for example. Not to be confused with limerick, the bawdy rhymes of sailors and barflies, a word that clicks off your tongue in witty preface to the humor that follows, limerance is the state of being infatuated with another. The definition is magical enough, but the sound of it, the other-worldly sound of it! You cannot say it quickly or without purpose. You do not let it slip out or say it under your breath. It is a show-caser, a show-stopper, a show-stealer of a word. In the Sanctuary of a Single Spoken Word, limerance is simply magnificent.

Or what about sonder? The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid, as complex as your own. Now this is a word you can hang your hat on. If the spoken wander draws one into the nether world of leisurely adventure, sonder is all this and more. Imagine traveling the world of another’s life, the subterranean life behind the passing smiles and hellos, the life beneath three-piece suits or overalls or aprons. Just imagine. And then say it aloud. Give it its sibilant s and its schwa-like o. Let the final syllable linger, its r filling the air with a resonant timbre. In the Sanctuary of a Single Spoken Word, this is a word meant to be the centerpiece of conversation.

Heliotrope is as stunning spoken as it is arrayed amidst other summer blooms. I remember when I first heard the word spoken. A sixth grade friend read a passage from a book she had checked out from the library, and when she came to the word heliotrope and spoke it perfectly into the bedroom where we had hidden away for the afternoon, it took on a life of its own. Gone were the gingham curtains and posters torn from pages of Tiger Beat. Gone were our cut-off shorts and plastic headbands. Heliotrope transported us into the corner of a Victorian garden where we shared the shade of an organza parasol and secrets unfit for a governess’s ears. Heliotrope carried the full weight of  adolescent romance for us, and merely saying it aloud sent us into communal bliss.

I’ll give it to the French for some singularly spectacular spoken words. Denouement, bouquet, silhouette, chignon, melange, milieu, panache and soiree.  Tres bon, indeed.

The strange wistfulness of used bookstores: vellichor. In the Sanctuary of a Single Spoken Word, there is a special place for such beautiful oddities. They are rarely spoken, not the stuff of casual conversation. And yet spoken, they are the stuff of dictionary-diving, of mulling and re-mulling, and finally, of affirming the absolute perfect marriage of sound and sense.

But just as there is a special place for beautiful oddities, there is also a place for those ordinary words that, when spoken by just the right voice, are extraordinary. In a crowded, pre-Christmas Target, I had misplaced my four-year-old daughter. Actually, she had intentionally placed herself in the middle of a rack of sweaters, completely hidden in what she later claimed was a “fort.” She remained hidden there as her sisters and I frantically searched and were just about to contact the manager when Mom pierced the air. It wasn’t just any Mom, for as any mother knows, moms punctuate the air in any public place. It was my Mom, the spoken word reserved just for me, the most beautiful ordinary spoken word ever. In the Sanctuary of a Single Spoken Word, Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, as well as your own name and the names of those you love, sit gloriously on the throne.

So let’s hear it for aquiver, aurora, ethereal, gossamer, lithe, winsome, and love. Speak them with reverence. Let them move with effervescence, shine with incandescence, and fill your soul and your world with grace.