Emily Dickinson
(1830-86). Complete poems. 1924

A
WORD is dead

When
it is said

Some
say.

I
say it just

Begins
to live

That
day.

When I look at the title of this poem, I wonder why the poetess might have used the adjective dead for a word. She
associated the death with the word and not with a person.

Another important question that I wonder to myself is why she wrote the word in capital. She probably
want to focus the reader attention to the word.                                                                      
The poem consists of two stanzas and each stanza has got a tercet. The poem is very short but it's full of meaning. The reader can notice a rhyme between the first and the second line("dead" and "said") and another one
between the third and the sixth line("say" and "day"). The poem examines two different opinions about the "life" of a word.                                                                      

The first stanza affirms some people don't give importance to the words. They believe that words which we have used to talk with somebody haven't got a value and they will be lost.  The poetess expresses her opinion that differs from the other one in the second stanza. She believes that the words we have heard from someone will live in our lives and they won't be lost.
She underlines that words are important for her.