For the Love of Words

I miss the English dictionary. Not the app dictionaries; I use one several times a day. I mean the big old book in which the words are listed alphabetically in two columns down a page. Many dictionaries have little thumb notches so that a reader can easily find the beginning letter of a word. My old Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, has lost all the labels on the tabs except for “C/D.”

Having arrived at the first page of the beginning letter we begin to scan the words looking for the second letter of the word and the alphabet, then the third, and so on until we arrive at the word we’re looking for.

On the way, if we aren’t in a hurry, we become distracted by an entirely different word whose spelling begins initially like our word. Sometimes we get completely off track, when the word that caught our attention makes us want to know the exact meaning of a word in its definition. Or we become entranced by a word that is followed by a series of words that share the prefix or are offspring of the first word, its derivatives. 

If we use a printed dictionary regularly our vocabulary grows with each word we look up.  If we become word lovers we look forward to a ramble through the dictionary, relishing the flavors of all the other languages English has borrowed from. English has more than one million words, far more than other languages, because it so readily adopts good words.

If I were marooned on a desert island and could have only one book, I’d want it to be an English dictionary. I would have all the words and could, in my imagination, put them together in countless ways for entertainment and enlightenment.

Now my hands are so disabled they can’t lift a printed dictionary without pain. I’m also liable to drop it on the floor. That’s why I rely on the electronic dictionary, but I sure miss my old Webster’s.

Back in the physical world, today’s photo features a few of the ripening gooseberries Dennis picked and stemmed over the weekend. Today we’re going to turn them into jam.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer