In a word...

Letters, symbols, myriad words of

Epochs long gone by weren’t exposed to

Xerography

In those early times. Eventually

Committees

Organized,

Gathered and

Recorded

All the words we know—

Parola, palabra, Wort, ord, mot—

Happily categorized them, and

Yes, of course, alphabetized them.

Should anyone out there like to replace the line noting a few Western Hemisphere languages with the word for ‘word’ in other global tongues, please do so. Speaking of words, I would love to hear how the word ‘love’ sounds and looks in all our world’s languages.