I'm Adeli Mone and this is The Slowdown.

I have a love of those small words we take for granted every day.

I once wanted to call a whole book with W-I-T-H, just with.

But then, when I said the word over and over, it lost its meaning, and I couldn't even

remember how to spell it, with, with, with.

Even if I do it right now, I might lose the thread of this episode and the thread of language

all together.

Those two, I wanted to call a book as if, which might be a good title, but again, once

I said it out loud, I could only see it as a part of language and not language itself.

Still, you see what I mean about loving these little parts of language that get sucked

up and swallowed by the bully nouns and those hard-working verbs and all those abundant

adjectives and adverbs decorating our walls.

But all words are a wonder, aren't they?

Even the word but, I love how it turns a sentence or a line into something entirely different.

We are on the road in the car together, and then someone says but, and there we go,

veering off in a whole new direction.

My husband has an ex-girlfriend who said, you know, I don't think you can say, I love you

but, and I'm grateful to that ex-girlfriend.

As Ned Stark once said, everything before but is a lie.

And then there is my favorite conjunction in all of the English language and if I could

start every sentence with and I would.

In improv acting class, there's the rule of yes and, which means you're always adding

...