Delores E. Topliff
October 16 is National Dictionary Day, an unofficial holiday celebrating the birthday of Noah Webster who
published An American Dictionary of
the English Language in 1828, the earliest version of the now famous, widely-used
Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
A dictionary is
a book, optical disc, mobile device, or online source containing the words of
a language alphabetically and providing information about their meanings, pronunciations, etymologies, inflections, and
derived forms.
The best way to celebrate Dictionary Day is
by expanding our vocabularies. Make sure to keep a modern dictionary in your
home and that a site like Dictionary.com is tabbed as a favorite on your computer.
You might enjoy the Reader’s Digest monthly feature, “How to Increase Your Word
Power, or sign yourself up to a site like Grandiloquent
Word Of The Day to expand your vocabulary daily.
In his book, Dead
Poets Society, author N.H. Kleinbaum describes the purpose of dictionaries: “So avoid
using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is
exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one
reason, boys – to woo women – and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do.”
People who love words usually enjoy puns and
team up their dictionary with a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus, so I’ll close with
this quote that recently appeared on Facebook: “I swallowed a
dictionary. It gave me thesaurus throat I’ve ever had.”
Groan,
but only people skilled in dictionaries and vocabularies have that much fun
with words.
What age were you when you began using a
dictionary? Or, what is the most important thing you have learned from a
dictionary?
For more blog posts and news updates, check my
website, delorestopliff.com
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