By Eva-Mariam Ssekibenga | Staff Writer
Do you know what is the most important book in American history?
No, it’s not the Bible; that’s next week’s review. It’s a book that people actually use in their life: the dictionary. Not just as a paperweight, but as a helpful reference for what constitutes actual English. And Webster’s the best of them all. It’s physical proof that American English isn’t just a grotesque mangling of British English but instead a sophisticated mangling, filled with little nuances that make Brits’ eyes twitch when they watch American TV. Especially during the ads about chips.
Everyone has used the dictionary, but has anyone taken the time to actually review it? Probably not, since that requires someone to be brave enough to read it cover to cover. I think of myself as a dictionary aficionado, but even I tend to fall asleep somewhere in the F section. That doesn’t mean I can’t review the book, though; I’ve read enough that I get the gist.
After a forty-page introduction that uses words that you would need to look up in the dictionary to understand, we finally get into what we’re here for: the words. It makes a strong entrance with a lengthy three-part definition for the word ‘a’, but quickly loses steam as it descends into acronyms that start with A, like the AAU. No one cares about the Amateur Athletic Union, but it gets top billing because it happens to start with the first letter of the alphabet. It reminded me of the time I skimmed through the 1998 edition of the Yellow Pages, and that was a traumatic memory I thought I suppressed long ago.
And that stuff is just on the first page! Most of the other pages follow roughly the same formula, stating the words and their definition, but occasionally something breaks the tedium--pictures! Unlike a boring old novel, this dictionary realizes that not everything can be described by words. Unclear on what a hammock is? Here’s a picture of it! Don’t understand what a cycloid is? I don’t know either, and the diagram doesn’t help much, but it’s better than nothing right? The criteria of what makes a word worthy of a picture or diagram is unknown to me, but I bet it involves Big Diction lobbying for their favorite word to take up the most space on the page. Corruption’s everywhere, folks.
Anyway, let’s get back to what the dictionary’s all about: words! The book has a lot of them, most you haven’t heard of. That when the pronunciation key becomes helpful, you can learn to say a new word in an instant. It also helps with the words you know but have been mispronouncing the whole time, which was a surprisingly high amount in my case.
My biggest critique of the definitions are the ones that refer to the root of the word that I’m looking at the definition for. The definition of tedium, which is “the quality and state of being tedious” is worthless. If I don’t know what tedium means, I probably don’t know what tedious means either. Now I have to go on a scavenger hunt to find out that word means. The cycle goes on and on until I spent thirty minutes trying to find out what a simple word like tedium means. It means the quality and state of being boring. My search: pure tedium.
The dictionary ends with a word starting with zy--, which is a disappointment. I’m sure someone in our generation will make a petition to make ZZ Top into a proper English word so that the dictionary can finally be complete. The books ends with a Marvel-movie-end-credit-reel-length list of biographic and geographic place names. The equivalent of an after credits scene is the section dedicated to foreign words and phrases. I would consider this borderline treasonous if it wasn’t for the fact that the English language is a combination of the some of the very languages used in there.
And that pretty much sums up the dictionary. It was a wild ride. 10/10 would recommend as a gift for any occasion. Except as a housewarming gift for your new Latino neighbors; your mileage may vary with that one.