UNABRIDGED TO NOWHERE

by Robert Lopresti

A long time ago my mother-in-law decided to buy me a big present for a special occasion and asked what I would like. I suggested a certain dictionary.

Later she called me from a bookstore. She had told the salesman that her son, a writer, wanted a Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. He asked if she was sure I hadn’t wanted the Second?

It was a perfectly legitimate question. There were plenty of people – especially writers – with strong opinions on the subject, which is why the Second stayed in print for so long.

Take Rex Stout, for example. He purchased a copy of the Third and disliked it so much that he soaked it in gasoline and used it to burn out wasp’s nests. And if that wasn’t enough, he built a novel around it.

That’s my opinion, anyway. Gambit begins with Nero Wolfe burning the Third page by page in his fireplace. My argument (which appeared in an article in that late great fanzine The Armchair Detective) is that Stout structured the whole book about his own loathing of the dictionary. The plot elements all orbit around Stout’s issue with the Third. So what was his problem (or, if you prefer, what was the dictionary’s)?

In that opening chapter Wolfe’s fire ceremony is interrupted by a potential client. He greets her as follows: “Do you use ‘infer’ and ‘imply’ interchangably, Miss Blount?”

Because, you see, the Third says you can do that. To use the technical term, the Second was prescriptive, but the Third was descriptive. That is, one dictionary wanted to tell you how words should be used while the other wanted to tell you how they are used. And Stout, like a lot of authors, felt that people needed to be told how to use words, because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing if you don’t know how to use it.

(And by the way, Gambit is full of people who misuse the knowledge they have, or don’t realize the importance of what they know, or infer things that aren’t implied. The killer misuses professional knowledge to commit murder. See what I mean?)

The defining moment

A few more thoughts about dictionaries. There are basically three ways to arrange them. (Yes, I know. You thought they were arranged alphabetically. I’m talking about the arrangement of definitions.)

You can put the most common definitions first. That saves the time of the user, and is a pretty common system.

But the more interesting method is the historical one, putting the oldest meaning first. This can lead to some jaunts through weirdly obscure meanings of familiar words, but it can be wonderfully educational. While the Third does use this system, it is extremely modest compared to the granddaddy of that field, the Oxford English Dictionary. This multi-volume monster is endless fun for a wordy.

Take the word “silly.” OED starts in 1425 with the meaning of deserving of pity. Then we get to helpless, weak, uneducated, and finally (in 1576) foolish. The adverb “smart,” on the other hand, starts in 1023 meaning causing pain, moves on to brisk, considerable, impudent, prompt, healthy, and in 1628, clever.

Ever think about the two meanings of the word “staple?” It can be a metal fastener or it can be a necessary product. (And of course, the name of the Staples office supply chain plays on both.) I was astonished to discover that the metal bendy thing is the older meaning (they didn’t use to fit in a desk size gadget, of course.

And that’s just a few from the letter S.

Dense, very dense

Getting back to the Second, it is also remembered as the first dictionary to include the word dord, which it defines as meaning “density.” Outside of this dictionary (and a few others which illegally cribbed from it) there is no such word. So how did dord come to exist? I invite you to speculate in the comments. If anyone does, I will tell you whether your answer is right or wrong. And I will be prescriptive, rather than descriptive.