Word
From Wikinfo
A word is a symbol. It stands for something. Rather than carry around a tree and pointing to it, we use a symbol. The uttered word "tree" stands for that idea.
Originally words were uttered aloud, they are verbal symbols for ideas and used to communicate. The next step has been to represent speech sounds with written language.
A word is a unit of speech or writing that symbolizes a meaning and communicates an idea. A word may consist of one or more morphemes, which are the most simple elements of a word.
For information on how and the extent to which word boundaries have been indicated in orthography, see Interword separation.
In computing, a word a small collection of information of one or more bytes. The amount of information in a computer's word is normally defined by its hardware. It is usually as large as the size of address used by the CPU to access its RAM. Due to the popularity of the early Intel x86 processors (which were put inside IBM PCs), a word came to mean 2 bytes (16 bits), even though the Intel 80386 and higher use 4 byte addresses (see x86).
Microsoft Word is a word processor produced by Microsoft.
In the Christian religion, the Word of God is the second person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ. Word, in this sense, is a translation of the Greek logos" which more broadly means reason, principle, standard, logic. Logos also has parallels to the eastern concepts of Tao and dharma.
In urban slang, "word" is an exclamation indicating deep and complete agreement.
Refrences
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Word" http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word August 3, 2003
