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Poetry & wordplay21 categories

Mine a word for puns, doubles, and buried senses

Building a poem around a word that should be pulling double duty.

Longwordplaypunsvocabulary
Take the word below apart for everything a poem could use.

Give me:
1. **Senses**: every distinct meaning, including obsolete and technical ones, with the field each belongs to
2. **Etymology**: the root, and any earlier sense that still haunts the word
3. **Homophones and near-homophones**, marked by accent where it matters
4. **Idioms and set phrases** containing it, which can be broken open or taken literally
5. **Compounds and derived forms**, including ones that feel unlikely
6. **Collocations**: the words it usually sits beside, so I can avoid or subvert them

Then suggest five ways a poem could make two senses active at once, each as a concrete phrase rather than a description of a technique.

Word:
Theme or context of the poem:

Making it yours

  • Paste your own material where the prompt asks for it. Everything above that line is instruction, not content.
  • Delete any rule that does not apply to you. A shorter prompt that fits beats a thorough one that does not.
  • If the answer comes back vague, add a line saying what you do not want. Constraints work better than encouragement.

Getting a draft going. Forms, constraints, and raw material for when there is no poem on the page yet.

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