Friday, June 09, 2006
Here's an excerpt from an email I sent to a dear friend:
So, conintuing on a little bit here on the dictionary thing, perhaps an overblown effort for a small tool, but it's actually been very interesting, and hell, you know me...
Don't know if I mentioned it before, but the public library, just three blocks from where I work, was a nationwide library of the year once. So, I went down there to have a look at their dictionaries. Let's just say they had a few more than Barnes & Noble. Like, shelves of them, all different. Now there were exactly two they didn't have that I thought they would: The Oxford Dictionary of English—not to be confused with the Oxford English Dictionary, and the Collins. (The ODE—formerly the NODE, New, that was in its first edition—is a single volume work, completely new I think 15 years ago or so, and widely heralded as excellent) Oh, they had Websters, American Heritage, World Book's, Britannica's I think, Chambers, Random House Webster's, and on and on. I looked up a couple words in about seven or eight of them, and they were all well done. I confirmed my choice on the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary that I want for my birthday. It's beautifully done, and I must say, the Webster's Third is simply classic.
So I looked through all these, what I would have formerly called "unabridged" dictionaries.
And then I walked around the corner to the shelf where not one, but two, editions of the Oxford English Dictionary sat.
One of my little lookup words, for no particular reason, was obeisance. Taking down volume, I don't know, 12 maybe, I plopped it open in the o's. I found it in a couple minutes, and there it was: Everything, and I do mean everything, you'd ever want to know about that word. On the way to it, I ran across the entry for "old", a rather innocuous word, one would thing. There were five, yes five, solid pages in the OED on the word "old".
Now, that's damned unabridged.
Of course for the usage I have in mind, this could be construed as a touch over the top. The Shorter or the Webster's like yours, or many others are perfect for what I want, each with slightly different presentation. The Chambers, in particular, I know I'll buy one day, just to have it. It's only $30 or so and just has a certain feel to it.
But when you really want the whole ball of wax, the OED is just about the end of it.
And then I thought:
How rich and vibrant must a culture be to care that much about its language? To put that kind of work into just documenting how we speak and write, let alone the writing itself. Standing in front of just the OED, I was looking at the work of how many people over how long? What about Webster's? Chambers? American Heritage? Each would have a whole staff and database devoted just to these reference books. Books that actually only take up a small part of a library in a medium sized city.
It's serious: Our culture means business about words. They matter: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Chaucer, Joyce, Delany, Wolfe, Pynchon, and how many other hundreds, thousands, that really know how to use them?
What a rich heritage!
I can't wait for my birthday.
So, conintuing on a little bit here on the dictionary thing, perhaps an overblown effort for a small tool, but it's actually been very interesting, and hell, you know me...
Don't know if I mentioned it before, but the public library, just three blocks from where I work, was a nationwide library of the year once. So, I went down there to have a look at their dictionaries. Let's just say they had a few more than Barnes & Noble. Like, shelves of them, all different. Now there were exactly two they didn't have that I thought they would: The Oxford Dictionary of English—not to be confused with the Oxford English Dictionary, and the Collins. (The ODE—formerly the NODE, New, that was in its first edition—is a single volume work, completely new I think 15 years ago or so, and widely heralded as excellent) Oh, they had Websters, American Heritage, World Book's, Britannica's I think, Chambers, Random House Webster's, and on and on. I looked up a couple words in about seven or eight of them, and they were all well done. I confirmed my choice on the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary that I want for my birthday. It's beautifully done, and I must say, the Webster's Third is simply classic.
So I looked through all these, what I would have formerly called "unabridged" dictionaries.
And then I walked around the corner to the shelf where not one, but two, editions of the Oxford English Dictionary sat.
One of my little lookup words, for no particular reason, was obeisance. Taking down volume, I don't know, 12 maybe, I plopped it open in the o's. I found it in a couple minutes, and there it was: Everything, and I do mean everything, you'd ever want to know about that word. On the way to it, I ran across the entry for "old", a rather innocuous word, one would thing. There were five, yes five, solid pages in the OED on the word "old".
Now, that's damned unabridged.
Of course for the usage I have in mind, this could be construed as a touch over the top. The Shorter or the Webster's like yours, or many others are perfect for what I want, each with slightly different presentation. The Chambers, in particular, I know I'll buy one day, just to have it. It's only $30 or so and just has a certain feel to it.
But when you really want the whole ball of wax, the OED is just about the end of it.
And then I thought:
How rich and vibrant must a culture be to care that much about its language? To put that kind of work into just documenting how we speak and write, let alone the writing itself. Standing in front of just the OED, I was looking at the work of how many people over how long? What about Webster's? Chambers? American Heritage? Each would have a whole staff and database devoted just to these reference books. Books that actually only take up a small part of a library in a medium sized city.
It's serious: Our culture means business about words. They matter: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Chaucer, Joyce, Delany, Wolfe, Pynchon, and how many other hundreds, thousands, that really know how to use them?
What a rich heritage!
I can't wait for my birthday.
# posted by goldpython @ 1:09 PM 
