The great Italian cookbook author, Marcella, Hazen once wrote, “Words are capable of mysterious chemistry. Taken singly, the three common words [Good Italian Cooking] appear plain enough in their meaning. We can use any one of them in ordinary conversation, confident we’ll be understood. But put just two of them together and you can set off a debate.”
Last week, I wrote about focusing on fun words before creating “perfect” sentences. But I love Hazen’s idea of word chemistry and mixing and matching as we come up with different meanings.
Here’s an example from my walk the other day: electric green field. It was early and the sun drenched the field, giving the new growth a bright green quality as if it had been electrified.
You can put green and field together; this meaning is clear. What about electric and green? How about switching? Green electric. And then there is electric field…
So many choices, yet not a sentence to be found…