Archive for the ‘Dictionary’ Category
Ah, Words…
Posted on: August 2, 2008
- In: Bibliophilia | Dictionary | Reviews
- 2 Comments
Found a great blog post today about how this woman got a word into the OED.
It is because of her that ‘food coma’ is in the OED:
“food coma n. U.S. a lethargic state induced by eating, esp. a large quantity of (freq. rich or unhealthy) food.”
I’ve written on dictionaries before, online and in meat space (hey, Lyza, can you talk to your buddies about that phrase?), but I thought I’d comment for a moment on the dictionary I use the most:
This online beauty is beyond a doubt the resource I turn to the most on an almost daily basis. Here, you find the meanings and translations of pretty much any word and phrase to/from English, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and German. I use it almost daily at work as I am managing a couple of files with French organizations, and I often have to write emails etc. in French (and read them!). Do a quick search, and if the resulting page of options is not sufficient, scroll down a bit further to the list of idiomatic phrases. And if what you’re looking for is still not there, there’s a list of Forum posts that will help. Still no? Then post your question (follow the guidelines please!) on the forum, and Voilà! within 5 minutes, you’ll have an answer. People are always combing the forums for questions to answer…’tis very friendly, accurate and quick!
Dictionaries, revisited
Posted on: November 21, 2007
- In: Book Links | Dictionary | Wishlist
- 4 Comments
A while back I wrote about dictionaries, as all bookish bloggers are wont to do (aren’t they?). I really enjoy having dictionaries, knowing they are there for when I need them.
I like them in person, hard and weighty tomes. I enjoy contemplating what they represent — the unfathomable hours of labour by word enthusiasts, the preserving of ever-changing nuance, the slanting of opinion, even the dictating of form and sound.
I have physical dictionaries, dictionaries on my computer, and links to numerous language resources in my bookmarks.
And of course, there are the thesauri, word lists, menus, reverse dictionaries…ooh! I could go on forever!
But then, there are the visual dictionaries. The online Visual Thesaurus used to be something free, but now you have to pay. I’ve never been able to justify it, as I would not use it as intended, I would just follow the visual trails for hours, ignoring the original need for a synonym.
Today I stumbled upon another online dictionary: Merriam-Webster’s Visual Dictionary. Probably more nouns than you’ll ever possibly need, but just in case you needed to know the name of the doohickey on a whatchamacallit, now you can just look for it.
Have I mentioned dictionaries?
Posted on: September 17, 2006
- In: Bibliophilia | Book Links | Cultural History | Dictionary | History
- 1 Comment
I like dictionaries. I have a number of them:
- Canadian Oxford (a must-have for any Canadian. Includes entries on ‘eh’ and ‘touque’…and one of the best sentences in the history of dictionaries: it’s way out in the suburbs, eh, so I can’t get there by bike)
- Gage Canadian (two copies, actually. Different editions,combined in the marriage)
- Websters
- Collins Cobuild (designed for ESL students, it defines words in full, clear sentences!)
- Longman Dictionary of Language & Culture (another ESL dictionary) I used this one to help me write my book in Korea
- a rather cool dictionary called Shakespeare’s Words by David Crystal and Ben Crystal. (Check out the link, as this is the online version, which you can play with for a 7-day free trial!)
- any number of language dictionaries: Greek, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Welsh, Italian…
- and, the pièce de résistance, the Oxford English Dictionary, lovingly known as the OED to those in lexicography, and dictionary-philes around the world. My copy is the Compact…20 volumes in 2 books, complete with magnifying glass (here’s a pic of how small the print is!)
Years ago, K.M. Elisabeth Murray wrote the story of her Grandfather, James Murray, editor of the original Oxford University dictionary project, in the book Caught in the Web of Words. It’s a detailed, respectful look at a man, and a process, that took years, and resulted in the most amazing historical document of the 20th Century. (I read it on a memorable trip across Canada by train.)
If you’ve never seen an OED entry, check out the word of the day from the OED website. You’ll see examples of the word used throughout its history, in different contexts, with quotes from historical writings.
Imagine the process. Pick a word. Read as much as possible, as far back as possible, to find the earliest example of the word in written use, and examples of new meanings of the word, tracing its history through the centuries of written English. Gather example sentences that illustrate the word’s meaning clearly, in context. They needed a lot of readers to help. And people did, from all over the world, in English speaking countries. Including one interesting man who submitted more than 10,000 words-in-context — who was also an inmate of an asylum for the criminally insane in the USA. Simon Winchester, author of a number of rather torrid cultural histories, wrote The Professor and the Madman, putting a lot of spin on this man, Dr. W.C. Minor.
Dictionaries. Talk to me of dictionaries.
Lori's Book Nook 
Recent Comments