Open Writing

Some may accuse me of epeolatry, the worship of words, since I like dictionaries maybe a bit more than the next guy. I like a dictionary in every room of my house, for conversations there often lead to questioning words’ meanings or origins. It’s something I picked up from the board president of the first library I served as director. She was delightfully spunky: fun-loving, witty and very serious about her Jaguar sportscar, her family business, and Scrabble. She was the first person I’d met this side of library school who appreciated the finer distinctions between dictionaries. For example, some dictionaries, known as “proscriptive,” tell readers how words are properly used, while others, i.e. “descriptive dictionaries,” simply define the terms without comment. Still others focus on current vocabulary while ignoring terms that aren’t used as much.

My favorite is the American Heritage Dictionary, an extremely descriptive example, which includes many old-fashioned expressions and pictures illustrating selected words. It’s also salted throughout with mini-essays called “Word Histories,” “Usage Notes,” “Synonyms,” and “Our Living Language.” Nothing beats actually browsing the pages of the AHD and letting serendipity come into play as curious words pop up.

However, you can go on-line at www.Dictionary.com, which includes the AHD, to see the usage note for “virtual” to see how it went from meaning “things simulated by the computer – like virtual memory … to things that really exist and are created or carried on by means of computers,” like virtual meetings. Or see the word history of “surly” to learn how that “was only one spelling for this word; another, ‘sirly,’ reflects its origin in ‘sir,’ the term of honor for a knight or for a person of rank or importance. ‘Sirly,’ the form under which the early spellings of the word are entered in the Oxford English Dictionary, first meant ‘lordly.’"

So it was a special thrill to meet a lady recently who actually knows people on the editorial board of AHD. I was signing copies of “Books Range,” my collection of columns, (available at Gulliver’s Books and the Fairbanks and North Pole public libraries) and when the lady said she was sending a copy to her AHD friend, I was humbled. After all, the NY Times Book Review called the AHD “more suited to our national character than any previous dictionary."

Us epeolates enjoy words’ sound, richness of meaning, and, as in the case of “surly,” their semasiology, or the study of how words’ meaning undergo change. Nevertheless, few of us are in Ammon Shea’s league. A BBC News report from last October tells how Shea, “a 37-year-old former furniture mover,” dedicated a year to reading a dictionary, but not just any word compilation. Shea spent 8-10 hours daily for a full year reading the Oxford English Dictionary, the mother of English dictionaries, which is published in twenty big volumes, weighing 137 pounds, and containing 21,730 pages and 59 million words.

The OED includes a listing for every word showing its first and subsequent appearances in print that illustrates its usage change over time. Shea’s wired differently from me, for I’d never be able to take in that much information day after day. The BBC said Shea’s quest brought on headaches, deteriorating eyesight, and back and neck problems. Moreover, “absorbing so much made Mr. Shea lose his grasp on his normal vocabulary … ‘I would go to the shop and forget the word for milk. Momentarily I’m looking for the cold, white stuff.’” He does remember some pretty good words, such as “tripudiate – to dance, skip or leap for joy,” “natiform – buttock-shaped,” “gove – to stare stupidly,” and “”happify – to make happy.”

Having worked as a furniture mover while in college, and possessing abnormal affection for dictionaries, I feel multi-leveled kindredness with Shea. And while W.H. Auden probably never hauled sleeper-sofas, when it comes to admiring dictionaries, the great 20th century poet was right there with Shea and me. “For a desert island, one would choose a good dictionary rather than the greatest literary masterpiece imaginable,” Auden wrote, “for … a dictionary is absolutely passive and may be legitimately read in infinite number of ways.”