I enjoy writing and I enjoy taking pictures, but I've always had a subtle problem with the phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words." While it is true that a picture is able to sum up a vast amount of information in a small space, the converse always struck me as more intensive. One word, can hold ten, a hundred, a thousand or more pictures within it.
Take a word such as plant. To most, it likely conjures various images - a tree, a rutabaga, a blade of grass, a flower, etc. ad nauseum. But it doesn't necessarily bring to mind the exact same image to the every person. Considering there is a bounteous array of flora in the world's numerous regions, and that the word "plant" is likely found in most, if not all languages - the number of images "plant" refers to make it a staggering amount of permutations per person per region per planet.
In that sense, a word has a nearly infinite number of pictures.
And this is what I think about when I can't sleep. Crikey.
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