Paroxysms, Parrots, Pemmican and Porterhouse
@owlwings (43910)
Cambridge, England
September 1, 2016 6:37am CST
It seems that the thick volumes of dictionaries and encyclopaedias are fast becoming useless except as door-stoppers Now that it is so easy to use the PC or the tablet or phone to look up the meaning and association of any word under the sun, it has become too difficult to find the correct volume, take it off the shelf and find the required meaning and description.
"What a quaint idea", our young ones now chortle in amusement, "to take a heavy, musty-smelling book off the shelf, to find table space for it and to turn pages to find what you want! So much easier, surely, to type what you want (or even to ask Siri or Cortana) and have the answer in a second!"
They don't know what they are missing! How many hours of delight have I spent looking up one particular word in an encyclopaedia or disctionary and being side-tracked by delicious nuggets of information completely unrelated except by the accident of alphabetical proximity?
Who would have known that a paroxysm is cousin to an oxymoron, or that nobody really knows how a porterhouse steak (called a sirloin in English English) got its name and that the word 'parrot' probably means 'Little Peter'. Pemmican was an essential ingredient of Peary's expedition to the North Pole. Whether he reached it or not is still disputed (he probably didn't) but it is certain that he would not have got anywhere near it or come back without the aid of that protein-rich invention of the Cree Indians.
What journeys have you taken through the pericognostic pathway of paginated perambulations?
11 people like this
9 responses
@paritosh36118 (140)
• New Delhi, India
1 Sep 16
@owlwings my seat partner is school used to carry a Dictionary in her bag. It used to seem something very hard to do to me. But as I grew up, I understood the importance of learning new words. Later I used to note down all the tough words learnt in the day and later look them up all together in a ditionary at home. Now, like everybody else, I have a dictionary app in my phone. :-)
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
1 Sep 16
The problem (or, maybe, the advantage) of an app is that it leads you quickly to the information you want and nothing else. If you look something up in a dictionary, you will more than likely come across words you didn't know (and never thought you might need), so increasing your vocabulary immeasurably.
How many words in my post did you (or should you have) looked up? There may be one or two which you won't find in any dictionary!
2 people like this
@celticeagle (167025)
• Boise, Idaho
1 Sep 16
Oh, yes! They don't know what they are missing. I remember I used to play a dictionary game with my boyfriend. We'd pick a page at random, put our finger on a word and then that was our word to use in a sentence and then it was the other person's turn. Great game for when the electricity goes out don't you think?
1 person likes this
@celticeagle (167025)
• Boise, Idaho
1 Sep 16
@owlwings .....No, they do their own. Or we did anyway.
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@marguicha (223028)
• Chile
10 Sep 16
For me, as a writer in my native language, dictionaries have been important all my life. Specially when I learned that synonims did not really exist and that economy in language meant the there was only one word that meant EXACTLY what I wanted to say, a good dictionary helped me search in my mind and my feeling for THE elusive word. I´m not sure that dictionaries online give you that.
1 person likes this
@Jessicalynnt (50523)
• Centralia, Missouri
2 Sep 16
lol they would simply tell you that there are websites like that. Hubby would say that reddit and tv tropes gets you to hop from thing to thing, as links show up and temp. I would note youtube and mylot do that to me, I listen to and read way more than intended when I start up
1 person likes this
@nannacroc (4049)
•
2 Sep 16
So many, Owlwings, that I can't think of anything offhand. I still use my books to look things up, sometimes it's quicker than using the internet for me. I often come across other intersting words. Thanks for the language lesson, I love learning the meanings of words.
@toniganzon (72281)
• Philippines
1 Sep 16
This discussion is so timely. This afternoon I told my son how lucky he is that he doesn't have to bury himself in piles and piles of hard bound books and encyclopaedias to learn. All he has to do is use his phone or tablet and he has all the information he needed without spending time in the library.
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