Using the wrong dictionary (2014)

Thankfully Wiktionary imported wholesale the old Webster's dictionary (due partly to it being in the public domain). It has the same multitude of meanings and examples, including those from the article. On top, of course, it's updated for very modern language and with quotations from literature and journalism closer to us in time. Which is why I have three different methods for quick lookup in Wiktionary in the desktop browser, and whipped up an extension for FF mobile to look…

I was given a copy of Chambers Dictionary[0] by my sister for my 18th birthday, I still have it. According to wiki, it is "widely used by British crossword solvers and setters, and by Scrabble players[..] It contains many more dialectal, archaic, unconventional and eccentric words than its rivals, and is noted for its occasional wryly humorous definitions". I've always loved its definition of "éclair": > "a cake, long in shape but short in duration" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chambers_Dictionary

I find it's actually interesting when learning a foreign language that I usually discover more about English in the process. The problem with many dictionaries is that they often try to be too reductionist, as with some of the examples in the article, but with other languages it's interesting because you quickly realise that words don't have a one-to-one mapping but instead words are usually overloaded with multiple meanings, sometimes related, and over languages will have words that overlap in…

A tear came to my eye when I read this. When I learned to read, Webster’s and Encyclopedia Britannica were my touchstones. I would roam the pages for hours discovering powerful and cogent associations. Most modern readers of English are not fond of nuanced prose; they cast a suspicious eye towards it and assume for the author a trivial fustian intent…