Three words in the title. The-Waste-Land. OED says the one-word wasteland has been in use as a noun since the middle of the nineteenth century, about seventy years before Eliot. Obviously Eliot had the one-word wasteland at his disposal but insists it be split in two (he says as much in letter related to the publication of the poem). This completely changes the sound and inflection of the title, even orthographically it changes how the title lands in our mind. What would have been The Wasteland now becomes The Waste Land (this distinction is best grasped by saying it out loud).
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