SIGN

Sign is a four letter word.

Think about what your signature means. It is a promise. A commitment. A concrete, permanently visible action that you are standing by the words you are signing your name under. It is a mark saying you have read something, and that you will abide by that.

What do you think of when you sign something? Do you scribble your name, in hopes to get it over with? Do you read what you're signing? Or do you think what that signature means. Do you ever look at your signature on a document later?

PASS OVER

Pass. Over. Two four letter words to tell together.
The Jewish celebration of Pesach, or Passover, begins this evening. During the passover seder, people tell the story of the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt and ponder the meanings of the symbols.

Edit 31 May 2011: If you're visiting us because of the app "7 little words", you may want to take a look over here.

FILE

File is a four letter word.

Although this comes the day after the traditional tax day in the United States, this wasn't actually what crossed my mind.

Today also marks the 40th anniversary of the File Transfer Protocol for the Internet. Although mostly replaced by more modern web protocols today, FTP was a revolutionary idea in its day, and still contains many aspects that are invaluable for systems today.

SINK

Sink is a four letter word.

99 years ago tonight, the RMS Titanic was on her maiden voyage from England to America when... well... she hit an iceberg and sank.

EDIT

Edit is a four letter word.

RATE

Rate is a four letter word.

A measure of the change of one unit vs a different unit. In this particular case, it was "bits per second" that inspired me to this word today. I was configuring some software and limiting the max transfer speed, but no units were given for the configuration. Further testing finally suggested what the units for the rate limit were... but it would have been nice to have just been able to read that in the documentation.

FORT YURI JOHN

Fort. Yuri. John. Some historic four letter words, today.

150 years ago, the opening shots of the US Civil War were fired against Union troops inside Fort Sumter.

50 years ago, Yuri Gargarin became the first man in space as he launched aboard Vostok 1.

30 years ago, Shuttle Columbia flew for the first time with commander John Young and pilot Robert Crippen at the controls.

LAWN

Lawn is a four letter word.

When I look for places to live, I compare them to my childhood, where I lived in a somewhat typical suburban neighborhood with a reasonable, but not huge, lawn. I still think about those yards, not to mention the one I have now. I enjoy my lawns, for the most part. I don't mind taking care of them... I enjoy picnicking on them... running around and playing in them... and as spring begins to blossom, I take advantage more and more of the lawn as a brief escape from being indoors. Could I do the same thing at a nearby park? Perhaps... but there is something about my own lawn that I enjoy.

JUMP

Jump is a four letter word.

This is a great FLW to play word association with. What other four letter words come to mind when you think about JUMP? I came up with five right off the bat, and I suspect there are even more.

DEEP

Deep is a four letter word.

A lot of times there are deep and significant meanings behind the four letter words that I pick. The weight of my mood rests upon them and they become four letters that peer into the inner sanctum of my soul.

And sometimes, to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a four letter word is just a four letter word.

I leave it up to you to figure out which one this is.

MIND

Mind is a four letter word.

"Mind your P's and Q's." It is one of those sayings that has always been a bit odd to me, yet the explanation for it (or at least one explanation for it) has had a most satisfying answer to me. When doing typesetting (using actual metallic moveable type), the letters were the reverse of how they'd be printed and had to be placed in the typesetter reversed as well. A lowercase "p" and a lowercase "q" could easily be confused, so the saying is a reminder to pay attention to details, an aspect which always appeals to me.

And it sounds nicer than reminding you to mind your B's and D's.

PATH

Path is a four letter word.

I'm working on a program and trying to configure it to "normalize" a path correctly, that is to resolve the path in a known consistent way. While doing so, I was pondering the nature of paths and roads... and the paths that we may take through life. This, of course, led me to ponder Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

and from thence to ponder Addventure, and to remember how much of this does feel like my philosophy on life - there are paths in the world that we must choose... but we not only choose the paths, we write what comes next.

MEOW

Meow is a four letter word.

I'm a cat person, but my cats aren't that photogenic. Fortunately, I have a friend who does have quite a few cats who enjoy getting their pictures taken.

DRUM

Drum is a four letter word.

ECHO

Echo is a four letter word.

The interesting thing about echos, to me, is how they're not exactly the same as the original. They're similar... usually unmistakeable... but they have a sound all their own that kinda drifts away on the wind...

YUCK

Yuck is a four letter word.

Happiness is not waking up and finding what the cat left on the floor for you to clean up.

FOOL

Fool is a four letter word.

I haven't liked April Fool's Day since I was in the fifth grade and a prank I was peripherally involved in backfired. Quite badly.