  The non-negative integer cocharge statistic on words was introduced in the
1970's by Lascoux and Sch\"utzenberger to combinatorially characterize the
Hall-Littlewood polynomials. Cocharge has since been used to explain phenomena
ranging from the graded decomposition of Garsia-Procesi modules to the
cohomology structure of the Grassman variety. Although its application to
contemporary variations of these problems had been deemed intractable, we prove
that the two-parameter, symmetric Macdonald polynomials are generating
functions of a distinguished family of colored words. Cocharge adorns one
parameter and the second measures its deviation from cocharge on words without
color. We use the same framework to expand the plactic monoid, apply
Kashiwara's crystal theory to various Garsia-Haiman modules, and to address
problems in K-theoretic Schubert calculus.
