Posts Tagged ‘holidays’

Happy New Year Everyone

// December 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // rambling

˙ʎןqısuodsǝɹ ʞuıɹp puɐ ʇɔɐ ןןɐ noʎ ǝɹns ǝʞɐɯ puɐ ɹɐǝʎ ʍǝu ǝɟɐs puɐ ʎddɐɥ ʎɹǝʌ ɐ sɹǝpɐǝɹ ʍoןןǝɟ puɐ spuǝıɹɟ ʎɯ ןןɐ ƃuıɥsıʍ

Happy Dictionary Day!

// October 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // books, rambling

October 16 is a special day. Though rarely celebrated outside the confines of grammar school classrooms or public libraries, Dictionary Day commemorates the birthday of American lexicographer Noah Webster, born October 16, 1758. I am not sure how long Dictionary Day has been around, but it appears we have been honoring good ol’ Mr. Webster for quite some time.

Today we are meant to appreciate language and words, and to dust off our dictionary skills. So I thought I would share a bit about why I love words so much. (If you are planning to continue reading, good for you! Most people probably tuned out around “lexicographer.”)

The book that turned me on to language was not a dictionary, but a fun, silly book my 1st uncle on my mum’s side gave me when I was very young – The Big Book of Amazing Facts. It was there that I learned the longest English word, found that I could spell “fish” G-H-O-T-I, and discovered palindromes like “radar,” “racecar,” and “Madam, I’m Adam.” (Random note: a friend of mine wrote the coolest palindrome book ever, Ana, nab a banana, and though I don’t think it’s in print any more, if you can find a copy, it is totally worth a read!)

I always loved reading, and my childhood favorites were Encyclopedia Brown, The Hardy Boys, and anything about dinosaurs, Robin Hood, or Greek and Roman legends. If I ever got stuck on a word, I would ask my dad what it meant. I always got the same reply: “Look it up in the dictionary!” And so I did. On a quest for a particular word, I would often wind up leafing through the delicate pages—much thinner than the pages of any of my other books—admiring all the goofy spellings and definitions. I learned that “set” has the most definitions of any word in the English language, and I found countless words that didn’t have any vowels at all, much to my teacher’s chagrin. (Teacher: “All words have vowels.” Me: “But what about ‘cwm’ or ’syzygy’?”) I was such a word nut, I became the youngest person at my school to ever compete in the county spelling bee.

Of course, my favorite board game was Scrabble or Scattegories, and I played against my mum and dad in epic games that lasted late into the night. We would play words like “en” and “em” and all sorts of spellings that had not yet entered my vocabulary, so of course I would challenge them. Yet every time, we would pop open my dictionary and there they were, so I would file them away in my memory to use the next time we played.

I don’t know what Mr. Webster would think of the English language today. As we become less and less formal, and with written communication becoming so easy and fast that we can communicate via IM almost entirely in acronyms (omg. lol! j/k brb. asl?), the appreciation of good, meaty, multi-syllabic words seems to be fading away.

So celebrate Dictionary Day, play with words today. Share your favorite obscure word and try to use it in a conversation. Speak in alliteration, rhymes, palindromes, or puns. Learn to say “hello” in another language. Play Scrabble or Boggle with your friends.