by Ammon Shea
Nemesism (n.) Frustration directed inward.
One of the few words I picked out of the OED that is of recent
coinage, nemesism is the creation of the psychoanalyst Saul
Rosenzweig, who proposed in 1938 that the word be used as a
counterpart to narcissism. He based it on the name of the
Greek god of vengeance, Nemesis.
also see: idiorepulsive
Noceur (n.) A dissolute and licentious person; a person who stays up late at night.
We have a needless superfluity of words that mean bounder, cad, libertine, wastrel, whoremongerer, and so on. Noceur is differentiated from the rest of the lot by the fact that it seems to be the only one to specify that the rotter in question stays up late at night.
Nod-crafty (adj.) “Given to nodding the head with an air of great wisdom.” (OED)
Always remember that it is better to appear smart than to be smart.
Novercal (adj.) Like a stepmother; stepmotherly.
From the Latin noverca (stepmother), novercal has more of a classical sting to it than does stepmotherly, and predates that word by several hundred years. In its definition the OED notes that this word in extended use also means “cruel, malicious, hostile” and then very helpfully reminds us that such use is frequently derogatory. also see: mothersome
O
I HAVE RECENTLY DEVELOPED a morbid fear that I am turning into one of “the Library People.” If you spend any time at all in public libraries you know what I am referring to. The Library People are not an official or organized group, but you can easily spot them by their noticeable lack of social skills, and they will be found in any major library.
I once spent three weeks in the microfilm room of the Forty-second Street branch of the New York Public Library, reading through every newspaper article published in the Times of London over the past two hundred years or so related to fatal accidents. I don’t recall exactly why I was doing this; it had something to do with an idea for a book that was mercifully never published. The Forty-second Street branch is the mecca of the Library People, and so I was able to observe them in their natural habitat.
The Library People are typically not homeless, although, like many homeless, they too are often equipped with a large number of plastic bags. These plastic bags usually seem to hold old copies of newspapers, scraps of random paper, and other various and sundry tools of the marginally odd.
As a whole, the Library People are quiet, even reserved, although an outburst of incoherent rage is not uncommon when one discovers that someone else has taken their favorite seat, or a desired book or periodical has gone missing. Aside from these occasional outbursts, which are almost never accompanied by any physical violence, the normal level of social interaction is based largely on mutters and dirty glances.
Although I frequently find myself wondering what they are doing there, I never muster up enough of either the courage or the inclination to approach any of them. In part this is because one of the salient characteristics of the Library People is that they seem to have no more than a nodding acquaintance with the concept of bathing. But I am certainly curious about them, and why they do many of the things they do. Does it help the microfilm machine to work if you curse at it, smack it, or, in moments of great duress, spit on it? Given that you have just come to one of the largest collections of newspaper holdings in the world, is it really necessary to bring an additional eight shopping bags filled with yet more newspapers? Are they really all conspiracy theorists, or do they just imitate them uncannily well?
I wonder what they do at night when the library closes. Do they go home and tend to their own newspaper collections? Several months after I’d spent that time in the microfilm room I happened back one day, and most of the same people who had been there every day previously were still there. Had they ever left? Or was it just coincidence that they happened to be there that particular day, and were they staring at me and wondering the same thing?
So now as I continue wending my way through the OED at the Hunter College library I find myself questioning whether I have in fact joined this elusive tribe. I hide in a corner of the basement, reading for eight or ten hours at a stretch. This is nothing unusual in a library, but I seem to have picked up other traits that would place me unwelcomely in the Library People camp. Sometimes I get angry at the dictionary and let loose with a muffled yell, such as when I turn a page and see endless columns of definitions of chemical compounds stretching ahead of me.
I will occasionally talk to the mice that peer out from under the door to a nearby equipment room, looking at me quiveringly and with the anticipation that I am perhaps a source of food, and not merely of curiosity. I tell them to avoid the glue traps, and that Bradley was unfairly thought of as an editor, in my opinion. And after I’ve sat and read for a few hours I’ll have to get up and take a brisk walk through the aisles, swinging my arms, or occasionally take a quick jog up and down the stairs.
When the library opens in the morning I am already there waiting. The clerks and librarians are also already there, and what do they think every morning when they see me go straightaway to the reference desk, add a volume of the OED to all the other books and papers that I’m carrying, and scurry furtively down to the basement, leaking bits of scribbled paper?
I may be nominally cleaner than the average Library Person, but I have other accoutrements, such as the twitch in my left eye that has recently developed and the inarticulateness that seems to come with having too many words in my head. I’m not quite dressed for success, since my job is to sit and read a book, and I’m usually attired in wrinkled linen pants and a torn but comfortable shirt, and lacking socks.
One day not long ago I caught a glimpse of myself in a glass door as I shuffled out of the library in search of more coffee. I saw a man with hair askew in all directions, an ink-stained shirt partially untucked, and unlaced shoes, who was talking to himself.
Last night I mentioned to Alix that I was afraid the staff at the library might begin to think I was one of the Library People. She laughed and said that they no doubt already did, and probably had a nickname for me.
Obdormition (n.) The falling asleep of a limb.
Obdormition is the feeling you get just before prinkling (pins and needles).
Obganiate (v.) To annoy by repeating over and over and over and over.
This word underwent a curious shift in meaning as it changed languages, as it comes from the Latin obgannire (to growl or yelp at). And although I cannot immediately think of anything beyond children in the backseat of a car tirelessly asking “Are we there yet?” I’m sure this word will prove apt in many other areas of life.
Obligurate (v.) “Prob.: to spend (time) feasting.” (OED)
A word that sounds suspiciously close to obliterate, considering that it is referring to such a jovial activity. The OED hedges its bets in the definition, prefacing it with the proviso “probably. ” Personally, I prefer the wording the OED cites from an earlier work: “to spend in belly-cheere.” also see: residentarian, surfeited
Obmutescence (n.) The state or condition of obstinately or willfully refusing to speak.
Anyone who has ever been the parent of, or been related to,
or been in the same room with an obstinate child will immediately
recognize the behavior defined by this word. On
the one hand obmutescence can hardly be characterized as a
sterling trait, but on the other hand, it is far preferable to a
tantrum.
also see: mumpish
Occasionet (n.) A minor occasion.
If I manage to make it through an entire day without spilling coffee on myself it is an occasionet. If I walk into a bookstore after not having visited it for several years and find that the same book I was thinking about buying the last time I visited is still there, it is an occasionet. Life is full of small occasions, and with their variety and small joys they somehow seem to be more worthy of c
elebration than large ones.
Omnisciturient (adj.) Desiring omniscience.
Wanting to know everything might generously be called a very bad idea. You may think you want to know everything, but as you learn more and more you will inevitably discover that there are many things out there you will wish you did not know. If you do not believe me, go find a good-sized dictionary, look up the word copremesis, and then ask yourself if you are truly glad that you know more now than you did before.
Onomatomania (n.) Vexation at having difficulty in finding the right word.
Finding a word that so perfectly describes a rather large portion of my everyday existence is one of the things that makes reading the dictionary feel like an intensely personal endeavor. The book is no longer merely a list of words; suddenly it is a catalog of the foibles of the human condition, and it is speaking directly to me. Of course, as soon as I learned this word I promptly forgot what it was, but this just provided me with the frustration of not being able to think of it, and then the satisfaction of once again finding it. also see: acnestis
Opsigamy (n.) Marrying late in life.
Do not confuse the opsigamist with the opsimath (a person who begins to learn late in life), as they are of different ilk— the opsigamist has obviously not learned anything at all.
Osculable (adj.) Able to be kissed.
Remember, just because someone or something can be kissed does not necessarily mean that it should be. Something or someone that can be hugged is referred to as hugsome.
Oxyphonia (n.) Excessive shrillness of voice.
People with oxyphonia need love, just like everyone else. And I am sure they will get it; they just will not get it from me, as I avoid them like the plague.
P
WHEN YOU’RE READING THE DICTIONARY, it can be very exciting to find mistakes. Unless you find too many of them, in which case it just means the dictionary you’re reading is not a very good one. But should you find an error just once in a great while, it tells you the dictionary you are reading is a very good one indeed, while at the same time you may congratulate yourself for having found an error in such a very good dictionary.
Finding errors in the OED (and calling attention to the fact that one has found them) is almost an entire subgenre in the field of lexicography. The first fascicle (A-Ant) was published on February 1, 1884. Almost immediately people began writing in with corrections. Less than two months later, the March 22 issue of Notes and Queries contained a handful of letters regarding errors both real and imagined. A. Smythe Palmer claimed to have found both a misprint and an etymological error. A reader with the initials W. C. B. wrote in with a handful of antedatings of words, and W. E. Buckley wrote to complain that neither aenographies nor anarogonick were included at all. Shortly thereafter, one F. A. Marshall, in a letter published on April 5, made the mistake of merely mentioning, in a parenthetical statement at the end of his letter, that the word allycholly “appeared to be one of the omissions” from the dictionary.
James Murray was a prodigious letter writer, and an even more prodigious defender of the dictionary (and his work on it). The April 19 issue of Notes and Queries printed letters from him addressing the “errors” that were pointed out. To W. C. B. he writes, “I hope that it will be generally remembered that omissions in the Dictionary are due not to me and those who have worked, but to those who have not” and suggests that in future, W. C. B. should mail his antedatings to the dictionary before, and not after, the work is published. Murray took the time to similarly castigate the other letter writers, either for not writing before the dictionary was compiled or for just being wrong.
The letters continued apace, and books on the OED began to come out before the dictionary was even finished. In 1920, George G. Loane published a small work titled A Thousand and One Notes on “A New English Dictionary,” covering the dictionary as far as it had been completed by that point. Loane’s “notes” dealt mainly with antedatings, instances in which he found an earlier example of a word’s first use than the OED had.
In addition to the many scholars and associations who have worked on this daunting task there are also innumerable unaffiliated individuals who feel the need to contribute their two cents to the lexicographic efforts of the Oxford University Press. Their letters, sprinkled over the last century and some, may be found in the Times of London, Notes and Queries, and various other publications. I am sure the OED has an enormous trove of them as well.
Great dictionaries often attract a good deal of unwanted advice. One of the most famous examples of this was the fury incited by Webster’s Third New International Dictionary in 1961. For various reasons, a large segment of the dictionary-reading public decided this new dictionary was “permissive” and was helping the language go to a linguistic hell in a handbasket. The offices of Merriam-Webster, as well as newspapers throughout the nation, were inundated with suggestions, some intended to be helpful and others not, as to how the dictionary could be improved.
I’d long wondered why it was that people seemingly felt an irresistible urge to write in with corrections for dictionaries—until I began reading the OED and realized what a powerful urge I have, when I find a mistake in the dictionary, to share it with someone. The margins of the ledger I’ve been keeping all my notes in are full of my own system of shorthand, little squiggles that tell me what to look for when I go back and read through my notes. A word I have a question about has, rather obviously, a question mark next to it. Words that are particularly charming have stars, and sometimes exclamation marks. Random thoughts I’ve written down are distinguished by arrows pointing at them. It is all very orderly and almost antiseptic. Except when I’ve come across a mistake. The mistakes are distinguished by a “Ha!”: the hubris and excitement I feel at catching the greatest dictionary in the world in an error is unmistakably apparent.
When I find a simple typo, I get a feeling of minor triumph. When I find something more substantial, such as a misspelled word, I begin to think I should set about applying for a professorship somewhere. And when I find something that is just out-and-out wrong, I’m so proud that I instantly confer upon myself guardian-of-the-language status. However, when I once happened to check some of these entries in the online edition, ones I had so proudly marked as errors, I began to notice something awry as soon as I reached M. The editors had corrected all of them, every single error that I’d found from M to halfway through P. It is a terribly deflating feeling to find out that you were right about something, and that nobody will care.
The OED is currently, for the first time in its long and storied history, undergoing a complete edit, which is occurring only in the online version. They started editing at M, and have made it partway through P, although occasionally a word before or after this will have been edited as well. This may come as a surprise to some, who would naturally assume that it’s been furiously edited all along. But it is not so easy to edit a book that is tens of thousands of pages long, and filled with the type of information that is constantly shifting.
Any dictionary ever written is, at least to some extent, already partially obsolete by the time it is published. Even if it takes only a few years to write, some of the words will certainly have changed their meaning slightly during that time, and other new words that didn’t make it in will have achieved some prominence in the language. This applies to the OED more so than to most dictionaries, as the last fascicle was published forty-four years after the first one. Words such as appendicitis and aeroplane either did not exist or were thought too scientific to merit inclusion when A-Ant was released.
Many of the definitions and other passages in the OED are now well over one hundred years old and clearly in need of updating. Thousands of new words have come into the language, and possibly tens of thousands of new uses for existing words. This dictionary is intended to be a historical record, not a museum. Even though I recognize the necessity of these changes, I am sometimes chagrined when I find that the editors have removed somethi
ng I had a particular fondness for.
A case in point: ploiter has long been one of my favorite words. Originally defined in the OED as “to work in an ineffective way,” it has a playful quality and humor to it. So I was a bit discomfited to see that it has gone missing in the new online edition of the OED. Well, “missing” is not quite the right word, but it has certainly been demoted. Where ploiter once had its own property as a headword, complete with etymology and citations, now it has been relegated to one of several obsolete alternative spellings of a submeaning of plouter. It is as though it has gone from being a country squire with a small but well-laid-out estate to renting a room in someone’s basement.
I am sure a good deal of time was put into assessing whether ploiter deserved its own headword; technical lexicographic information was weighed, and a reasonable and scientific decision was made. I do not think the editors made a mistake, but I also cannot help but think that something has been lost. Along the same lines, I wish that the new and improved OED had not taken the word “pains” out of the etymology for opera (it has been replaced with “effort”), since I’ve always found this art form to be particularly grueling to listen to, and rather liked that I could imagine my prejudices reflected in its roots.
On the other hand, the editing has fixed the mistakes, clarified the order of definitions that have shifted over the years, and added thousands of new words and definitions. Words such as resistentialism (describing the seemingly aggressive behavior of inanimate objects) have been added, and I cannot complain about things like that. I can’t claim that ploiter and opera were mistreated, but I’m sad to see their old meanings go.
