by Ammon Shea
Quomodocunquize (v.) To make money in any way possible.
A number of the odd and fantastic words in the OED seem to have been either first used or popularized by Sir Thomas Urquhart. When reading the citation of his that the OED uses to illustrate this word, it is hard for me to understand why we do not commonly use more of his favorite words. Even if you have no real idea what his meaning is, the sentiment is unmistakable and beautifully indelible: “Those quomodocunquizing clusterfists and rapacious varlets.”
R
ONE EVENING, WHILE I AM ENJOYING the end of R and dreading the beginning of S—by far the letter with the most OED entries—I get a phone call from my friend Madeline, the dictionary collector. She is calling to tell me about the biannual conference of the Dictionary Society of North America, taking place the next week at the University of Chicago, and wants to know if I will be going.
Perhaps few people would receive notice of a dictionary society meeting with considerable excitement; I, clearly, am one of those people. Besides, I desperately want to take a break from reading. But I don’t feel I can afford to take the time off from my reading, and I have some momentum going. I fear that if I stop reading, even for only a week, coming back to the sea of S’s when I return might prove to be too demoralizing for me to continue.
I have been having dreams about words lately, a sign that would seem to indicate that I need to take some sort of hiatus from the project. The dreams are not fantastic, nor are they night-mares: their entirely pedestrian nature is what makes them so disturbing. I wake in the middle of the night with a start and the terrible feeling that accompanies a dream in which you think you’ve forgotten something that is very important. And then I hear a deep voice resonating unbidden in my mind, enunciating some word or definition I thought I’d forgotten. I do not view this as a sign of progress.
Then I take at look at the schedule for the conference, and the list of lectures that will be given, and I realize this will be the perfect way to take a vacation without feeling as though I am wasting any time. Not only are there going to be lectures that any bona fide dictionary lover would drool over, such as “Care and Feeding of a Corpus” and “Considered and Regarded: Indicators of Belief and Doubt in Dictionary Definitions,” but there will also be a number of lexicographers from the Oxford English Dictionary attending.
Aside from feeling the allure of a guilt-free working vacation, I want to go simply because I think it will be pleasant to be around a large crowd of people for whom reading dictionaries is not viewed as a morbid proclivity. I imagine that I will meet any number of elderly men and women at the conference who will nod their heads fondly and say something along the lines of “I remember the first few times I read the OED . . .”
So I buy myself a plane ticket to Chicago and a few days later find myself flying into O’Hare Airport at eight in the morning. Things immediately start on the right note when the woman at the check-in counter gives me a canvas tote bag with “The Oxford English Dictionary” emblazoned on it, and then directs me to the enormous coffeepot in the basement.
The first thing I notice about my fellow attendees is that an alarmingly large number of them wear bow ties. The next thing I notice is that very few of them are not lexicographers or academics. In fact, I only notice three of us who are attending purely as fans: two of whom are Madeline and myself.
The lectures are incredibly entertaining. I’ve been reading almost naught but dictionaries and books and papers about dictionaries for the past decade, and many of the people whom I’ve only known as names on a title page are there. I restrain myself from asking for autographs from several lexicographers whose work I much admire.
On the second day of the conference I meet Sidney Landau, who is one of the preeminent writers on lexicography today and has long been one of my favorite writers on the subject. Not only was he formerly the editor in chief for the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, he is also the author of Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, which is a terribly important book for a guy like me.
Landau is both witty and erudite, and seems only slightly surprised when I tell him I am a big fan of his. Several minutes into our conversation his eyes suddenly narrow and he says in an almost accusatory tone, “I’ve heard that you are reading the entire OED.” I respond that this is true, and he says, “But that’s mad!”
This is not quite the reaction I’d have expected from a man who has spent the last four decades writing dictionaries, a man who prepared the latest edition of a book he’d written by retyping the entire previous edition by hand, in order to refamiliarize himself with the material. But it turns out to not be an uncommon one. When I meet another member of the Dictionary Society and tell him what I am doing, he chuckles and says, “Ha! That’s quite funny . . . you know, for a moment there I thought you said you were going to read the whole—what?—but—but—but it’s so long!”
This is admittedly nonplussing. I had been certain I was going to be in the midst of a group of people for whom my only oddity was not that I was reading the OED (this would surely be commonplace) , but rather that I’d decided to write a book about doing so.
For a brief period of time I find myself wondering if what I am doing is so abstruse that even the lexicographers think I am a nerd.
This concern does not last long; in fact it is later that afternoon as I am listening to a paper presented by one of the lexicographers from Oxford that I have a change of mind. A woman named Sarah Ogilvie is talking about how she has spent a good deal of the last five years trying to unearth the reason that a particular form of punctuation (//), called tramlines, and used to designate a word that has not yet been naturalized, is missing from the supplement to the OED. She has not yet gotten to the bottom, but she is close, and expects to know fully what the reason is within another year or two.
Five years looking for a missing punctuation mark: I am filled with admiration and jealousy. The OED is full of mysteries, and I don’t yet have the time to chase after all the questions I have about it. But sometimes I would love to stop my constant movement forward, to cease feeling as though I have to get to the next letter, to put the book down and look for the answers to some of these other lingering questions.
While the searcher for the missing tramlines may be an extreme example, she is by no means the only person here who has devoted an enormous amount of time to ferreting out an answer to a question that very few people even know exists; in fact, the conference turns out to be full of them.
I understand why none of the people I’ve met have read the whole OED; they are all too busy looking at or compiling other dictionaries. Who has the time to read a twenty-volume dictionary when you have to finish writing your own? Feeling simultaneously abashed and relieved, I realize that I am, in every sense of the word, an amateur.
The conference lasts only three days, and I am tremendously saddened to see it end. It has been a refreshing change to feel as though I am still immersed in a dictionary, but in a somewhat social fashion, and the lexicographers, linguists, and assorted oddball scholars who make up the DSNA are a far more interesting group than I had expected them to be. But as always when I travel, there is a palpable excitement to get home. Just a short plane ride away is my New York, my girlfriend, my dictionary, and all the other things, small and large, that make life so enjoyable. Some of them alphabetized.
Rapin (n.) An unruly art student.
I do not think I know any art students at the moment, and I am certain I do not know any unruly ones. But should I have occasion to meet any in the future I will be armed with the appropriate thing to call them.
Recray (v.) To yield in a cowardly fashion.
I do not know why the Old French recroire (to yield in trial by combat) has turned into the English recray, with its accusations of cowardice, but I’m sure that with just a little effort we can figure out a way to blame it on the French.
Recrudescence (n.) The reappearance of something, usually regar
ded as bad.
Recrudescence is a medical term (which I have seen elsewhere defined as “the reappearance of something bad”). The word was rather oddly redefined by the brothers Fowler in 1906 in The King’s English, and used in the sense of “the reappearance of something good.”
Redamancy (n.) The act of loving in return.
Redamancy is distinguished from most of the other words about love in that it is one of the few that specifies reciprocity. also see: unlove
Redeless (adj.) Not knowing what to do in an emergency.
Redeless has a variety of meanings, but this is the one that speaks to me the most. In yet another case of the rare thing enjoying a common word and vice versa, it is interesting to note that redeless has largely (or entirely) fallen by the linguistic wayside, while savoir faire (which originally meant “knowing what to do in an emergency”) has survived.
Redonation (n.) The action of giving something back.
Redonation first appears in the early seventeenth century, which would lead me to believe that people have been giving useless junk as wedding presents for at least four hundred years now.
Rejoy (v.) To enjoy something as its possessor.
Rejoy has several meanings, the first two of which are somewhat noble, and more than somewhat boring. The third meaning, however, is probably the most applicable one for most people, as so many of us cannot seem to enjoy things unless we possess them. Which explains the existence of shopping malls.
Remord (n.) A touch of remorse; (v.) to remember with regret.
Like rejoy, remord enjoys a wide variety of meanings, but the two listed above leaped out at me. The first of these manages to make remorse sound something like a bit of milk being added to your tea. But when utilized as a verb, remord seems as though it can instantly render poetic any decision made in the past and subsequently regretted, from the choice you made twenty years ago to not say something to that young woman on the train in Switzerland, to the choice you made last night to finish that third gimlet. also see: desiderium
Repertitious (adj.) Found by chance or accident.
Repertitious has not had nearly the success in entering the language that serendipitous has had, most likely because its PR team isn’t nearly as good. The noun form of the latter, serendipity, was made up in the 1750s by the novelist Horace Walpole, based on Serendip (a former name for Sri Lanka). Repertitious, on the other hand, has its first mention in Thomas Blount’s dictionary of 1656. Writers—1, lexicographers— 0.
Resentient (n.) A thing that causes a change of feeling.
It could be the way that he chews or the fact that he always interrupts you. It could be the embarrassing way that she laughs, or the fact that she snores loudly and will not admit it. also see: aeipathy, unlove
Residentarian (n.) A person who is given to remaining at table.
One of the greatest residentarians of all time was Diamond Jim Brady, the famed financier and glutton of the Gilded Age. Brady was fond of fine jewelry, fine meals (fourteen courses at a sitting), and Lillian Russell. When asked how he knew when he’d had enough to eat, he is reported to have answered that he would start his meal with three or four inches between his stomach and the table, and when the two began to rub together tightly he’d stop. also see: obligurate, surfeited
Resipiscence (n.) A return to a better state of mind or opinion.
The reason for the birth of the preprandial drink.
Rhypophagy (n.) The eating of filth or disgusting matter.
The citations for this word include the extremely helpful advice from the Daily News in 1881, stating that “Rhypophagy is not, on the whole, a healthy practice.” The inclusion of the phrase “on the whole” would imply that there may be some circumstances in which the eating of filth is in fact a healthy practice. Bear in mind that this was written in nineteenth-century London, where street vendors sold such delicacies as meat pies of indeterminate origin.
Roorback (n.) A flash report that is circulated for political purposes.
The old saw “The more things change, the more they stay the same” applies to most areas of life, and politics is certainly among them. This word became synonymous with foul play in politics during the 1844 presidential campaign, when a letter from a man supposedly named Baron von Roorback was sent to a newspaper in upstate New York, claiming that one of the men running for office, James K. Polk, had been keeping slaves and branding them. The letter was soon proved to be a fake, Polk entered the White House, and roorback entered the lexicon.
Rough music (v.) To annoy a neighbor by creating a loud noise, such as through knocking pots and pans together.
Pots and pans were apparently quite popular at one point as noise-making devices. On a related note, the OED also lists ran-tanning, the practice of publicly shaming a man who has beaten his wife, by standing outside his residence and banging away on pots, pans, and other assorted objects.
Rubicundity (n.) “Redness (of face) from good living.” (OED)
A quick translation: what the OED refers to as “good living” we typically call “cirrhosis of the liver.”
Rue-bargain (n.) A bargain that one regrets, or breaks.
A good honest English dialectical term for a deal with the devil.
Ruffing (n.) The stomping of feet as a form of applause.
Maybe you do not go through life as I do, plagued by things for which I think “There’s a word for that and I can’t remember what it is” or “There must be a word for that, and I haven’t found it yet.” This is a constant and slow irritation, an itch somewhere in the back of my brain, and can sometimes be so overwhelming that it disrupts my ability to speak. The only balm for this is to discover brilliant words like ruffing.
S
ONE OF THE REASONS THE OED is so wonderfully and excruciatingly long is the thoroughness with which it treats almost every word. Nowhere is this more apparent than in S, which stretches across four of the twenty volumes and takes up more than three thousand pages. It is full of common words that are meticulously dissected, where every possible meaning is considered, and which can be quite painful to read. But whatever difficulty I might have in reading a word, I imagine that defining it in the first place was significantly more difficult, and I wouldn’t feel right about skipping over something that some long-suffering lexicographer spent so much time and effort on.
Many people believe that the best dictionary is the one with the greatest number of difficult words in it. While the treatment of hard words certainly does matter, I think that a much better indication of what makes a dictionary great is how it treats the most common words of the language.
For example, let’s look at what might be referred to as a hard word—pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis. Yes, it is big and imposing, with forty-five letters and nineteen syllables, but it only has one meaning (it’s a kind of lung disease). Once you discover what that one meaning is . . . well, that’s it, the word is defined and dismissed.
This business of writing a dictionary suddenly doesn’t seem so difficult—find a word, write down what it means, alphabetize it, and then call it a day and congratulate yourself for having recorded the language so successfully.
By contrast, let us next look at what might be referred to as a common word—go. Everyone knows what go means, and one might be forgiven for thinking that if a monster like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis was easy to define, then go should be much, much easier. But is it? Actually, it is almost impossible.
A word like go doesn’t have just one meaning—it can have dozens and dozens of them. A child might have to go (to the bathroom) , or have a go (a turn in a game), or play go (a Japanese board game), or simply want to go (to leave). There are many other meanings of go, and that’s before you get to its role in combinations and phrases, all of which also need to be defined. You can go crazy, go short, go wide, go with, and, my personal favorite, go the vole (in cards, to take great risks in the hopes of great gain).
If this still
doesn’t seem so difficult, feel free to stop reading this book for a spell and have a go at defining a common word of your choice—a short, simple one that you use all the time. How about . . .
Set.
Go ahead and try to define set. Write down everything you can think of about this simple little word. Jot down every meaning you can think of, and then compare your list of meanings and senses of set with the one that’s in the OED.
Exhaustive is not quite the right word to describe the OED’s definition of set, as it is the length of a novel, taking up more than twenty-five pages in the OED. Set is the largest entry in the print version of the OED (it has been usurped by make in the online OED, but only because M has already been revised and added to, and S has not). It is broken down into hundreds of senses, and most of those senses have various subgroupings that distinguish it even further. This is a word you can spend a week or more wallowing in. You can roll around in there and lose sight of what language actually is as your mind struggles to differentiate among the hundreds of shades of meaning that can be produced by three letters.
You should read it.
I’m serious; you should read it, all sixty-thousand-odd words of it. In fact, if you do not own the OED you should go out tomorrow and buy it, just so that you can read this one definition. If you won’t buy it you should go to the library, or to the house of a friend who owns the OED. Invite yourself in, curl up in your friend’s favorite armchair, and proceed to spend the next few days reading.
To give you an idea of how comprehensive the definition of this word is, consider that, as a verb, it has 155 main senses listed, some of which (such as set up) have as many as seventy subsenses. Set functions not only as a verb, but also as an adjective (nine main senses), a noun (forty-eight main senses), and a conjunction (one sense).
Set can have as commonplace a definition as “a grudge,” as poetic as “the end of life,” and as pedestrian as “a mining lease.” Its use stretches from well over a thousand years ago to the present, an astonishing degree of longevity.
