Written by Lambert Straser of Corente
I hope this hastily impromptu post provides some palate cleanser from elections, genocide, drones, liquid cats, and everything in between. I came across this great post on Twitter the other day. Amazingly, it spread quickly.
Although this thread prompted me to know that “spell” and “spell” were originally one word, or at least derived from the same root. , unfortunately that was not the case. From the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD, more on that later):
Again, at least in Ursula Le Guin’s Chronicles of Gedo, a wizard can gain power over an object when he knows its true name, especially when he knows he is not supposed to use that power. have. And how can you know your true name if you can’t spell it? Le Guin’s Dictionary This was the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), but as you can see, there are various branded spin-offs (Compact, Shorter, etc.).
I’ve been writing, but until now (without making a conscious decision) I’ve avoided reading anything about writing. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary and the Follett and Fowler user manual are all my tools. *
*Note (1989). I find Fowler and Follett authoritarian and rarely use them now. Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, revised and supplemented by Miller and Swift’s Words and Women, are my guideposts to the English language and have never led me astray. Buying second-hand small print Oxford English Dictionaries in bulk is an endless source of learning and fun, but Shorter Oxfords are still a good quick fix.
in any case, 7 year old girl received OED. What a wonderful gift! I didn’t get my OED until I was much older (though my mom read to me from the encyclopedia she picked up every week at A&P). At the time, I was working in a factory in Providence, Rhode Island, and ordered the OED for my Book of the Month club. I saw the page Like thiswhich is why it came with a magnifying glass (though I learned to squint).
I thought the OED would help me in my calling as an adult poet, but I realized too late that at that age I had nothing to say in that medium. Nevertheless, I carried it with me until I lost it along with my first lost book collection.
At some point between factories and the advent of personal computers, I discovered the following: raymond williamsHe made much better use of his encounter with the OED than I did. from his book keywordpage 13:
Then one day, in the basement of the Seaford public library where we lived, I looked up at the sky. cultureAlmost casually, one of the 13 (currently twenty (!!)) What we now call the OED, the volume of the Oxford New English Dictionary on Historical Principles.
“Historical principle” actually means that examples of use exist throughout (this is probably due to “civil etymology” in accumulated social structures such as the one we just saw) (Collected by a “correspondent” who practices) At Macaulay Library). Williams continues:
It was such a shock to be recognized. The change in feeling I was trying to understand apparently began in English in the early 19th century. The connections I felt between class and art, industry and democracy took on a historical as well as an intellectual form in language…. This was the moment when a quest that began as an attempt to understand some urgent contemporary issues, literally the problem of understanding my immediate world, achieved a particular form of trying to understand tradition. This work was completed in 1956 and became my book. culture and society
Continue culture and societyWilliams went on to write keyword. Starting on page 14, the rules are as follows:
Quotations followed by just a name and date, or just a date, are from examples cited in the OED.
Example rules from page 50:
CAPITALIST as a noun is a bit old. Arthur Young used the word in his Travels in France (1792), but it meant relatively loosely: “a rich man or a capitalist.” Coleridge used it in its developed sense: “capitalist.” . . We have labor according to demand” – in Tahletalk (1823).
So, you never know what a 7-year-old girl will end up doing.
But my first reference work was as a poet when I was a teenager. did I have something to say, at that age — (image via james moss) Roger’s Thesaurus. It is now perceived as obsolete. It now looks like this:
As you can see, Roget’s organizes words into classes (“order” is #IV out of 6). Within each class, opposing concepts are placed, that is, opposite each other. As you can see, order and disorder – “progress”, “pedigree”, “economy”, “station” – are on the left, and the ominous “irregularity”, “crowd”, “farago”, “Disjector membrane” is on the other side. Not at all newspeakHere, “un–” is used to indicate negation because “Newspeak has no nonpolitical antonym.” ” Now, of course, I’ve forgotten all the stupidity of my youth, but I still enjoy looking left and right for opposites that aren’t complete opposites. Is “complexity” really the opposite of “regularity”? — and still turning each word over in my fingers.
Sylvia Plath — a real adult poet — used Roger’s (image via) Peter K. Steinberg), I searched for it and found it (image via Peter K. Steinberg) It was being sold at auction (“Lot 309”). Here’s what she added with her underlining:
(Mystery: Moss uses the same page in Steinberg – “Order and Disorder” – but doesn’t mention Plath. Why?)
One more thing: Shortly after discovering Roget, I discovered the AHD dictionary of Indo-European roots.
It is interesting that “villa”, “bailiwick”, “parish” and “ecology” (!!) all branch out from the same root. The infinite form is the most beautiful!
The complex data structures contained in all these works – historical principles (OED), classification systems (Roget), tree structures (AHD), may not have inspired great poeticism in me. , definitely prepared me for a life of symbol manipulation as a PMC. Manke That’s me!
In conclusion, I highly recommend giving reference books like the Oxford English Dictionary to the 7-year-old in your life, as well as to poets, aspiring poets, self-teachers, or just anyone who wants to master great English. Recommended. . The online version is broken, difficult to use, and untrackable. Get books that are physical, durable, and long-lasting. When you go to a used bookstore and get a book, the older the better. Who knows, maybe you’ll hit the jackpot and find all 20 volumes of the OED in full size.
