Word Up

07 December 2003

Reading this:

Did I feel [it] was looking down at me? Or that I was smarter than it was? Was it too clingy? Unobjectionable but unexciting? Simply put: Did it make me look forward to spending more time with it?

you probably wouldn't guess that the author is talking about dictionaries. Of course, if you already did, and you're anything like me, you would know exactly what she's talking about. Which is why I was pleasantly surprised to find my dictionary ranked second of seven. Especially because I got it for free from the UA office (thanks Peter).

Now, the article only considers college-type dictionaries, leaving out the shelf-filling OED and others like it. But if you're looking to actually buy a dictionary, and you're not my brother, you might find it useful.

64 Comment(s)

Comments

Hey I thought of something the other day that might make dictionaries a little better.. (This revelation came after I had turned to a "real" dictionary after having been dependent on online dictionaries to find the meanings of words I'd come across in the rest of life; I'd forgotten how fun it can be to just browse the pages of a dictionary to find words I haven't ever seen before)... So, paging through a dictionary and finding a new word... if I ever wanted to use it, the first thing that would prevent me from sounding ridiculous using the word is how I use it, based on the definition in the dictionary. The other thing, however, is the thing that should maybe be accounted for in dictionaries: how pertinent and prevalent the word actually is in common language. There are many words that are totally obscure in spoken language, but in the dictionary they don't look any different than, say, the word "have". And I would end up using it, not knowing that it hadn't been used since the 60s, and it might look like I had just looked through a dictionary to find that word. (It shouldn't matter I know, but I am vain.)

Sidenote: the main character in "Oryx and Crake" (Margaret Atwood) - which takes place in the future - finds pleasure in college and early adulthood looking through old vocabulary lists (like the vocabulary of today) and finding these old obscure words that have more meaning than the words he's familiar with but have fallen out of usage by his time.

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