"Hold on, hold on," said the Bursar. "Yes, indeed, figuratively a word is made up of individual letters but they have only a--" he waved his long fingers gracefully "--theoretical existence, if I may put it that way. They are, as it were, words partis in potentia, and it is, I'm afraid, unsophisticated in the extreme to imagine that they have any real existence unis et separato. Indeed, the very concept of letters having their own physical existence is, philosophically, extremely worrying. Indeed, it would be like noses and fingers running around the world all by themselves--"
That's three "indeeds," thought William, who noticed things like this. Three "indeeds" used by a person in one brief speech generally meant an internal spring was about to break.
Terry Pratchett, The Truth
