Blog Posts by Subject: Dictionaries

My hope is that this blog will serve as a useful starting point for anyone seeking or researching the origin of words and/or phrases, also called etymology. Both print-based and web-based sources are included.

But of course it wasn’t finished. It never could be, it never would be, and it never will be.

Welcome back to the Reader’s Den for the final week of our discussion of The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester! The book tells the tale of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), completed in 1928, but as the author notes at the beginning of the epilogue, it can never really be complete, since the English language itself is forever changing.

Welcome back to the October Reader’s Den! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary as much as I have. I’ve appreciated the vivid portraits of the people involved in the creation of the “Dic,” and Simon Winchester’s literate prose had me running to the OED (the online edition) on a few occasions. I wanted to investigate such lovely but rarely encountered words as “pettifogging” and “gallimaufry.”

Thank you for stopping by the Reader’s Den for the second week of our discussion of The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Are you already engrossed in the trials and triumphs involved in the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)? Did you enjoy the whirlwind tour of the evolution of the English language and its lexicography in chapter one?

Welcome to the October Reader’s Den!

Did you know that the word den has its origins in the Old English denn, meaning habitation of a wild beast? According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the first recorded use of denn is in Beowulf, around the year 1000. The figurative use of the word, meaning a place of retreat or abode, as in the “Reader’s Den” didn’t appear until a few centuries later.

On a rainy, spring evening in May, Patricia T. O’Conner, former editor of the New York Times Book Review and author of Woe is I  and Origins of the Specious gave a talk at the Mid-Manhattan Library, for the 4th year in a row, entitled, “How Words Evolve… a Darwinian look at the English Language."  You might think a talk on grammar would be drab—it was anything but.  She briefly discussed how new words are formed, how old ones change, and even how the dinosaurs among them become extinct.  Did you know that the color, puce, has a Greek origin; that “Serendip” is the former name of Sri Lanka, and that 

Have you ever encountered an entirely new landscape or situation and simultaneously noticed that you don’t have the words to describe it or to ask questions about it? It’s not that you’ve forgotten the words or have suddenly regressed to a state of preverbal babbling, you realize, but that you’ve found a corner of experience that is still remote to you, a forest still overgrown with your own ignorance - your "unknown unknowns" have waxed into "known unknowns," and the effect has left you speechless.

Most people are familiar with the name Noah Webster as the father of the American Dictionary, a book that we all grew up with and still use today.  What many people may not know is that besides being a lexicographer, he was also a dedicated orthographer and philologist, working in spelling reform and lingustics, and had a large influence on the early American language.

A few weeks ago I was invited to a bridal shower, and by the time I got around to looking up the registry almost everything had already been fulfilled. I don't love registries anyway, and because I'm a librarian I figured I can always get away with giving people books for any and every occasion. Right? I thought a nice cookbook would be the perfect gift, and then remembered I had already done this a few years ago, giving another friend an aphrodisiac cookbook for her bridal shower. I was so proud of myself, because usually showers beget either sexy gifts like lingerie, or practical gifts like food processors. I had thought of a gift that was both sexy and 

While I've taught a number of classes about how one would begin culinary research at the New York Public Library, I understand that people can't always make it to midtown in the middle of the day, nor does everyone live in New York. For those reasons and more, I've put together a brief tutorial on how to begin culinary research at a library and I will attempt to make this as universally applicable to other libraries as possible. 

Knowledge is power, and in hard times, finding the best information can be even more important. These books, websites, and electronic resources, available through your local library, can save you both time and money!