On the Origins of Human Language

In the beginning was the worm, or more precisely, worms. They all slithered happily about in a big damp confusion until one day, the blackbird came. The blackbird spoke to the assembled worms "None of you will last. I will perish you down to the last delicious cell, then ditto for the other bugs."

Hearing this, the worms were afraid, and oscillated fearfully, and vibrated nervously, and wriggled fretfully and would have gone on doing so had not one worm got the bright idea to wriggle itself into an "O", which happened to be just big enough to express a lament, and so that worm was whisked away to be an "O" on the safe, warm tongue of the widow, where the blackbird could not find him.

Intuiting this, the next two worms became an "A", which could just about manage to hold fear, or, in a pinch, wrath, and so the slimy pair were spirited in duplicate into the waiting mouths of the murderer and his victim.

And then the next six or seven worms - look, you get the idea - they became the word "zigs" in the mouth of a 1930s gangster or something. The point is, whenever you see worms arising after rain, you can be sure new words are soon to follow. More of these words, like "petrichor", should be a tribute to the worms we speak.

Oh right, the blackbird. He won't come back. Soon after he went to bug the ladybugs, some of the worms became in the mouth of a cat the sound "MEOW", and when the blackbird heard that right behind him, he was so afraid he became the night.