"I do love perusing the dictionary to find how many words I don't use - words that have specific, sharp, focused meaning. I also love the sound of certain words. I love the sound of the word pom-pom"
About this Quote
Rush is confessing to a pleasure that feels almost suspiciously nerdy for an actor: the private joy of words as both tools and toys. The first move is slyly self-deprecating. He’s not bragging about vocabulary; he’s tallying absence, savoring “how many words I don't use.” That posture signals curiosity over credentialing, the opposite of the performative word-hoarding that often passes for intelligence.
Then comes the real tell: “specific, sharp, focused meaning.” An actor lives inside precision. A script can hinge on a single verb’s temperature, a consonant’s bite, a word’s social class. Rush’s admiration for “sharp” words is less about Scrabble points than about control: the right term narrows the world, pins down an emotion, makes a scene playable. It’s craft talk disguised as whimsy.
The pivot to sound tips his hand toward performance. Words aren’t just definitions; they’re mouth-feel, rhythm, breath. “Pom-pom” is a perfect example: bouncy, percussive, almost childlike, full of round vowels and repeating pops. It’s an actor’s word because it’s already doing a little character work before you’ve attached meaning to it.
Culturally, the quote lands as a quiet argument against our era’s flattened language - the way online speech trends toward multipurpose sludge (“literally,” “iconic,” “vibes”). Rush is pointing to an older pleasure: language as a cabinet of finely labeled instruments, and the dictionary not as a judge but as a playground where you can still be surprised by what you don’t yet have words for.
Then comes the real tell: “specific, sharp, focused meaning.” An actor lives inside precision. A script can hinge on a single verb’s temperature, a consonant’s bite, a word’s social class. Rush’s admiration for “sharp” words is less about Scrabble points than about control: the right term narrows the world, pins down an emotion, makes a scene playable. It’s craft talk disguised as whimsy.
The pivot to sound tips his hand toward performance. Words aren’t just definitions; they’re mouth-feel, rhythm, breath. “Pom-pom” is a perfect example: bouncy, percussive, almost childlike, full of round vowels and repeating pops. It’s an actor’s word because it’s already doing a little character work before you’ve attached meaning to it.
Culturally, the quote lands as a quiet argument against our era’s flattened language - the way online speech trends toward multipurpose sludge (“literally,” “iconic,” “vibes”). Rush is pointing to an older pleasure: language as a cabinet of finely labeled instruments, and the dictionary not as a judge but as a playground where you can still be surprised by what you don’t yet have words for.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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