Words are the embryos of ideas, the seed of thought, the framework of reasoning, but their contents goes beyond the simple official definition found in dictionaries. There, words appear exact, precisely and scientifically measured... And in these cold, orderly lists you cannot find the inner expanse of each word, but only the doorway to them.
From "La seducción de las palabras", by Alex Grijelmo, Santillana Ediciones Generales, 2000, as published by Punto de Lectura, 2007 (the translation o the passage is my own).