Dictionaries

One of the features I love about my Kindle is its dictionary feature. When I run across a word I don't know, I move the cursor to the word, and the definition appears at the bottom of my screen. No need to run to the shelves and pull out the big dictionary!

I grew up with dictionaries. As long as I can remember there was one in the house when I was growing up. The Christmas of my senior year of high school my parents gave me The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, so I would have one to take with me to college. I still have it. A few years ago when I decided I needed a more up-to-date dictionary, Mom gave me The American Heritage College Dictionary. I'll probaly get myself a new one in another few years because language changes.

As each of my brother's children graduates from high school, I give them a dictionary (I still owe the middle nephew one).

The summer between having to leave our first apartment because the lease was up and moving into our condo, Brian and I put most of our belongings in storage and stayed with his parents. One day I needed a dictionary, and there wasn't one in the house. I was flabbergasted.

Then there are misuses. I was a pretty good speller in elementary school. I could usually figure out how words were spelled by breaking apart how they sounded. But there were times I got stumped, and I'd ask the teacher. "Look it up in the dictionary," she'd tell me. Really? If I couldn't spell it, how was I going to find it in the dictionary?

One year I had a teacher who from time to time used the dictionary as a form of discipline. For some infractions you had to sit at your desk during recess and copy the definition of the word run. In most dictionaries that's at least a page of small print to be copied out by hand. Set usually has as many, or more, definitions in most dictionaries, but I don't remember being given any word but run to copy out. Maybe it had the most definitions in the dictionaries we had in our classroom. I wonder how many kids learned to hate dictionaries that year?

I always have my dictionary and my thesaurus by my side when I'm writing. Although I have to be careful because I can get sidetracked by etymologies, idioms, and other words and information. I'm an incorrigible researcher.

Some other time maybe I'll tell you about times I spent reading the set of encyclopedias in our house.