How to have fun thinking with a paper dictionary

Thursday, April 18, 2024

People often ask questions like, “Why do you have that paper dictionary in your office when you can just look things up online?”

Reader, let me tell you!

Walt Goggins makes me think of the word “ornery” — so I looked that word up. (As John McPhee tells us, it’s important to look up words even when you think you already know the definition.)

Ornery: “Mean-spirited, disagreeable, and contrary in disposition; cantankerous.”

Well, yeah, but not quite.

“See Synonyms at CONTRARY.”

Okay, let’s go.

The entry for “Contrary” is several paragraphs long. My eyes glaze, not over, but above — to the entry for “contrarian.”

That’s a word that usually has a negative connotation, right? “Oh, he’s just being contrarian.”

But let’s read the definition, anyways.

“con-trar-i-an n. an investor who makes decisions that contradict prevailing wisdom, as in buying securities that are unpopular at the time.”

Contrarian as investor?

Oh, I like this idea.

I don’t want to oppose the status quo just to oppose it — I was to invest in what I think is undervalued at the moment. (Like paper dictionaries.)

Now, I’m thinking about word that “prevailing.” That’s an interesting word. Let’s look that up.

Cool, cool, what I thought, but OOOH look a picture of a PRETZEL:

I mean, I know what a pretzel is, I don’t need to read that definition, do I? Oh, yes I do, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t know the connection between a pretzel and prayer:

So that’s how you go from thinking about Walt Goggins to thinking about monks, pretzel, and prayer in a just a few steps.

All thanks to the American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edition, purchased for $5 at Goodwill.

Filed under: reference books

Rob’s Roget and reference

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

After writing about discovering the magic of Roget’s Thesaurus, I started getting really interested in what reference books writers keep near their desk.

What I did not anticipate is this photo of Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford with his MacBook and a big stack of reference books:

From his Fresh Air interview:

I love the English language. My favorite book is a thesaurus, you know. I’m constantly looking to find words and language that some bands would maybe hesitate to use or they’re not able to because of the arena that they work in.

In his memoir, Confess, Halford writes about Roget’s Thesaurus being “worth its weight in gold!” and bringing it into the studio with him:

When I wasn’t recording vocals, I was low-profile in the studio and usually sitting on my own in the corner, studying hard from a book. Roger was obviously curious, and after a few days he wandered over to have a word with me.

“You’re very engrossed in that book, Rob,” he noted. “Is it a… Bible?”

“Hardly!” I laughed, showing him the book. “It’s Roget’s Thesaurus!” Roger looked pretty relieved.

Mr. Roget and I were coming up trumps. I have always been keen to widen my songwriting vocabulary and still have that same tome today.

He writes more in Biblical:

I have a book that is very dear to my heart. It’s forty-five years old, but it’s in extremely good nick for its age. Published in 1977, it’s my well-thumbed copy of Roget’s Thesaurus, and it has helped me to write the lyrics for every single Judas Priest album from Sin After Sin onward.

What you need to write a hit, Halford says, is “paper, pencil and a good Thesaurus.”

Hell yeah! (Big thanks to my pal Julien.)

Roget’s Thesaurus: A library of words

Wednesday, February 8, 2023

In my latest newsletter, I wrote about becoming obsessed with Roget’s Thesaurus, after realizing that every thesaurus I’d ever picked up was alphabetical, and alphabetizing a thesaurus basically destroys the meaning behind what Roget was trying to do.

“We tend to think of a thesaurus as a collection of synonyms and antonyms,” writes Roget’s biographer, Joshua Kendell. “But Roget’s is essentially a reverse dictionary. With a dictionary, the user looks up a word to find its meaning. With Roget’s, the user starts with an idea and then keeps flipping through the book until he finds the word that best expresses it.”

Read it here.

A book of words

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Nick Cave handwritten dictionary — Nick Cave’s handwritten dictionary

In his latest newsletter, my friend Alan Jacobs notes that Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary is now fully online, and points to his 2006 piece, “Bran Flakes and Harmless Drudges: Dr. Johnson and his Dictionary,” in which he recounts much of Johnson’s struggle putting together his book of words. (I was particularly sympathetic to Johnson’s disgust at his own “idleness” while holding a firm conviction that “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” I do love a man who contains multitudes… especially multitudes who hate each other.)

At the very end of the piece, Alan writes about the magic of paper dictionaries (emphasis mine):

Surely every user of dictionaries or encyclopedias can recall many serendipitous discoveries: as we flip through pages in search of some particular chunk of information, our eyes are snagged by some oddity, some word or phrase or person or place, unlooked-for but all the more irresistible for that. On my way to “serendipity” I trip over “solleret,” and discover that those weird, broad metal shoes that I’ve seen on the feet of armored knights have a name. But this sort of thing never happens to me when I look up a word in an online dictionary. The great blessing of Google is its uncanny skill in finding what you’re looking for; the curse is that it so rarely finds any of those lovely odd things you’re not looking for. For that pleasure, it seems, we need books.

Fifteen years later, this is no less true: the magic of a paper dictionary is the magic of finding things you didn’t know you were looking for. It’s a magic that electronic texts, for all their usefulness and convenience, still haven’t touched.

The supposed “shortcomings” of paper are what, in fact, make it such a wonderful technology. Here’s Alan, again (with emphasis mine, again):

George Landow has written that “the linear habits of thought associated with print technology often force us to think in particular ways that require narrowness, decontextualization, and intellectual attenuation, if not downright impoverishment.” But it turns out that, when it comes to dictionaries anyway, it’s hypertext that narrows and impoverishes. The simple fact that I cannot pick up a dictionary and turn to the precise page I wish, or, even if I could do that, focus my eyes only on the one definition I was looking for — the very crudity, as it were, of the technology is what enriches me and opens my world to possibilities.

Get your paper dictionary today! You shan’t regret it.

An open dictionary

Thursday, September 24, 2020

I have blogged before about my love for my paper dictionary, but a few days ago I posted this reminder to Instagram:

Someone yesterday seemed incredulous that I had a paper dictionary open on my desk. Let me tell you: it is the best $5 you will spend at Goodwill. Keep it open nearby, and look up words in it constantly. (This one is an American Heritage.) As you’re looking for a word, you will be distracted by other words. This is a feature, not a bug. If you don’t know what to write about, you can just turn to a random page and start reading and stealing words. Bonus points if you use a pencil to mark words you’ve looked up and why. I also keep one open in the living room and look up definitions with the kids when they want to know what a word means.

And just a few days later, I discovered that my kindergartner (although, are you really a kindergartener if you never actually go to kindergarten?) had got into my stamp pad and done this: