The King’s English Dictionary

16 10, 2023

Dictionary Day

By |2023-10-12T08:43:54-05:00October 16th, 2023|Holidays, Writer's Life, Writing Craft|1 Comment

This day honors Noah Webster, the man who fathered the American Dictionary. It’s one of my favorite holidays because I love dictionaries.

As a child, I’d spend hours poring through the pages of my grandmother’s eight-inch-thick Webster’s New International Dictionary (of the English Language). It was a fertile resource for a blossoming logophile or, as I prefer to call myself – a wordsmith.

The ancient leather-bound book with its India-skin paper had leather alphabet tabs cut into the pages. The detailed illustrations and maps are gorgeous. There were diagrams, charts, and thousands of words.

With so many dictionary resources readily available online, it’s easy to believe a hard copy isn’t necessary anymore. I disagree. Every home should have at least one realio-trulio paper dictionary available.

All sorts of wonderful magical stuff can happen when you use a hardcopy dictionary instead of looking up definitions online.

Your finger glides over other words as it scrolls down the printed page. Words that you might never have seen right there at your fingertips. You can see a word’s origin and its root without clicking to a different screen for synonyms and antonyms.

Yes, all that’s included with online dictionaries, but do you scroll down to discover the rest of the entry?

Probably not.

Understanding meaning is important. I learned that from my British antiques business partner. His British accent and my Texas drawl tended to muddle discussions and complicate purchases for the shop when the English and American definitions didn’t match. The King’s English Dictionary he gave me saved us many times over.

Spelling can be a problem no matter what type of dictionary you use. I stump spell checkers 90% of the time. Plus, spell checkers don’t give definitions.

I keep 20,000 WORDS by Louis A. Leslie side-by-side with my dictionary for fast lookup of commonly misspelled words. This little jewel gets me through my writing day.

While you may never love dictionaries as I do, I still recommend you have a hard-copy dictionary handy. You never know what you might learn.

4 04, 2022

The King’s English isn’t always English

By |2022-04-02T13:15:40-05:00April 4th, 2022|Make Me Think Monday|2 Comments

I learned that many years ago from my British partner in our antique business. With his King’s English and my Texas English, understanding one another was frequently a challenge.

As we traveled the English countryside on our quest for merchandise, I quickly learned his bobbles and bits were my smalls. My chest of drawers was his bureau. What he called rubbish, I thought garage sale.

He finally gave me a King’s English dictionary so I’d know what he meant.

Lately, we’ve been watching a lot of BritBox mysteries and I’ve been reminded again of all those language differences.

This GrammarChek infographic highlights over sixty U.S.-British English differences.

British vs. American English: 63 Differences (Infographic)
Source: www.grammarcheck.net

What about you? Have you ever had communication issues with someone who spoke the King’s English or watched a British tv series where you needed my King’s English Dictionary to check the meaning of words?

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