“Her birthday: must set plans in motion. Run a bath, put on cologne, set the table. High anxiety. Run down list: set watch again, put water in glasses, set flowers. Run to the window — phew! Watch her put a finger to the doorbell. Such joy! What timing! And just as the sun sets, too!” Thus does an evening beckon, full of pleasantry and promise. But as described here it notes events in a manner of considerable interest for the lexicographer. For scattered within the vocabulary of this 54-word drama are 11 uses of the three most complex verbs in the English language: ‘set’, ‘put’ and ‘run’. Each of the trio is possessed of so many meanings, senses and shadings of interpretation as to have occupied for months, even years, the exceptionally agile minds working on the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (expected in 2037).

— Simon Winchester

This text is an excerpt from ‘A Verb for Our Frantic Times’, an essay featured in SET-PUT-RUN, a book with works by Jaya Pelupessy. In his work Jaya explores the way the process to create an image and the result are related. The book SET-PUT-RUN is continuing this research by recording the process of making a book, and becomes and endless loop of reproduction.