Epimysium. Opprobrium. Pecuniary. What do these words have in common? They were all added to the vocab learner tool by way of the dictionary in my e-reader (alternative answers for the facetious: 1. “Nothing,” 2. “They’re all words,” or 3. “They all have the letter ‘i’ in them”). What a fabulous feature! At any point while reading, I can press a word to see how to pronounce it (roughly, I don’t know all that linguistic-ese stuff or anything), learn its definition, see it used in a sentence, and then add that word to a list I can refer back to any time to strengthen my understanding of the English language! It’s so exciting, I almost want to stop writing this post and then go add the entire next sentence from my book into the vocab tool for further perusal!
So, imagine the inferiority complex I developed as I stumbled upon a blog post from a decade ago entitled “You’re probably using the wrong dictionary,” by James Somers (do check it out: https://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary).
Was that true?! I had no idea we had progressed beyond quirking our haughty eyebrows in condescension towards our friend’s inferior homes, cars, boats, cell phones, pants and underpants and have now focused our disdain instead upon the dictionary that they use.
Honestly, I was more curious than offended. As far as I knew, dictionaries were just big books you used to look up the meaning of words. It’s an interesting article, though, and it got me excited all over again about books, reading, words, and English. James talks about the history of dictionaries and the individuals who write them. He weaves a tale of an elusive, archaic volume from a bygone era that can grant its user greatly enhanced lexical powers should they only be able to locate and acquire a copy- Webster’s 1913.
To make a long story short, James found it, and further found that his ability to learn and remember new words was enhanced as he used this dictionary- words came alive in new ways as a careful author brought enduring personality to what was before merely a bland and colorless explanation. Because James is a good person, he then shared this discovery in his blog post and made it easily available to the curious.
After some digging for a file format that better suited my needs, I figured out how to load it into my Kobo and tested it exhaustively over the course of thousands of pages. I found that while it’s certainly interesting for a variety of reasons, I think your mileage will, obviously, depend on your needs. As James observed, the language used in the dictionary was absolutely lovely. People truly don’t speak the way they used to and while language is always evolving and growing in interesting and unpredictable ways as time moves forward, there’s something romantic and technical in the unfamiliar methods our forebearers put the same tools to use. What that means, however, is that the 1913 is locquacious to a fault, and thus not an apt tool for every situation.
But as what was initially a search for a compatible file turned into a deeper exploration of dictionaries and their use as a reading companion that spanned the internet, I found that there are many competent tools available, and many of them straight up rip off the best parts of Webster’s 1913, abeit in a more concise and approachable way. For me, I’m not much of a writer. I love to read, though, and I adore the unfathomably high skill ceiling of the english language, so I’m always excited when I bump up against a word I’m unfamiliar with. In a given reading session, however, I tend to be more preoccupied with making progress through my current book and less with evoking a particular collection of feelings and visuals from a singular word. On me, the additional context of the 1913 tends to be, sadly, wasted.
So after spending weeks reading about, looking at, and using dictionaries, what I have to say is this: The dictionary you’re using is probably fine, but know that if you’re unsatisfied, the rabbit hole goes further than you might think, and it’s worth exploring. I hugely enjoyed my time reading about dictionaries as well as figuring out how to add them to my e-reader.
I now keep two primary dictionaries in my device. My daily driver is the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. But, close at figurative hand is the 1913 for those moments I do want a world of meaning opened to my view.
Thanks for the adventure, James.