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by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)

A word is dead
Language: English 
Our translations:  FRE GER ITA
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live - that day.

About the headline (FAQ)

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

  • by Ernst Bacon (1898 - 1990), "A word", 195-? [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Gloria Coates (b. 1938), "A word is dead", from 15 Songs on Poems by Emily Dickinson, no. 5 [sung text checked 1 time]
  • by Logan Skelton , "A word is dead", 2008 [ soprano and piano ], from Dickinson Songs, Book 2: The Unknown Peninsula, no. 1 [sung text not yet checked]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Una parola è morta", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission


Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 5
Word count: 19

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

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