What’s in a Word?

Dalrymple writes at Salisbury Review on the beauty of finding the right word:

The morning after my arrival I was trying, without much success, to find main entrance [sic] and to go from thence to the room in which the conference I had come to address was being held. I came to a cross-road of two identical corridors and looked around me, trying to find some clue as to which direction to take. I must have looked bemused, for a guest was just about to enter his room, saw I was uncertain which way to go, and said, ‘Quite.’

What admirable concision! How much that one, beautifully-chosen word expressed!

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