Gonzalo Barr

Dictionaries are most often labeled reference books.  You open one when you need the definition for “ekphrasis” or the spelling for “occasion” or “embarrassment.” They are not usually books you read from cover to cover. So what if you were to take a year to read the entire Oxford English Dictionary (second edition) from beginning to end?

Ammon Shea did just that and then wrote about it in Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages (2008), which is not a title that rolls off the tongue easily. The publisher’s description begins –

“I’m reading the OED so you don’t have to. If you are interested in vocabulary that is both spectacularly useful and beautifully useless, read on…”

So reports Ammon Shea, the tireless, word-obsessed, and more than slightly masochistic author of Reading the OED. The word lover’s Mount Everest, the OED has enthralled logophiles since its initial publication 80 years ago. Weighing in at 137 pounds, it is the dictionary to end all dictionaries.

In 26 chapters filled with sharp wit, sheer delight, and a documentarian’s keen eye, Shea shares his year inside the OED, delivering a hair-pulling, eye-crossing account of reading every word, and revealing the most obscure, hilarious, and wonderful gems he discovers along the way.

Writer and bibliophile, Nicholson Baker (see my post about him here), blurbed the book –

“Oddly inspiring.…This is the Super Size Me of lexicography….Shea has walked the wildwood of our gnarled, ancient speech and returned singing incomprehensible sounds in a language that turns out to be our own.”

Language Log blog quotes from a passage in the chapter “K” –

The story is about Shea’s 11-grade English teacher Mr. Wozniak, doing a unit on homonyms. After alter-altar, he moved on to horde-hoard.  Shea recounts what happened next:

We never got to the next word, as I raised my hand and called out that there was another homonym for hoard and horde.  I wasn’t trying to be a smart aleck; I honestly thought that he had forgotten to include the word.

“Another homonym for hoard?  Hmmm … very interesting, Mr. Shea … I don’t believe I know it – perhaps you could tell us what that word is?”

“The word is whored, as in, the squire whored his way across all of London,” I proudly exclaimed, and then spelled the word, just in case my point hadn’t been made.  The class tittered predictably, and Mr. Wozniak’s face turned an interesting shade of red …

“That is not a word!” he thundered.

“But – but I just read it last week in – ”

“Enough!  That is not a word!”

If you like to read about eleventh-grade teachers thundering, the Language Log post is here.

Photo:  OED (2d ed.), terradaily.com; Source:  Language Log blog.