One of the Things I Like to Do Least Is Look up a Word in the Dictionary. If You Re Trying

Dictionaries

One of the things I like to do least is look up a word in the dictionary. If you’re trying to find out how to spell a word, it’s hard to look it up if you don’t know how to spell it. And then you have to wade through all those little symbols and you don’t know what they mean.

I looked up the word H-A-R-A-S-S to see whether it’s spelled with one or two R’s or one or two S’s and whether it’s pronounced HArass or haRASS. I still don’t know.

Anyone can call a dictionary Webster’s. There’s Merriam Webster’s Collegiate, Webster’s New World, Webster’s New World Second College Edition, Random House Webster’s, Random House Webster’s Concise Dictionary. The concise one is bigger than the one that isn’t concise.

One is called The American College Dictionary. For people who are supposed to be word experts, that’s not very expert. It isn’t a dictionary for American colleges. It’s an English dictionary for American college students.

Then there’s The American Heritage College Dictionary. Their New College Edition is actually older than the one that doesn’t say “New.” I have a dictionary thirty years old that proclaims its newness. They ought to print the name with disappearing ink. The word “New” would disappear after ten years. The argument in the dictionary business is whether to explain the proper use of English or whether to tell you how it’s being used by the most people – often inaccurately. For instance, I never say: “If I were smart.” I always say: “If I was smart.” I don’t like the subjunctive假設法的no matter what the dictionary likes.

The dirty words are in dictionaries now, too. They didn’t use to be. This old dictionary, for instance, goes from FUCHSIA倒掛金鐘屬植物to FUDDLE灌醉to FUDGE乳脂軟糖: “a homemade candy.”

It’s interesting that we don’t use words on television that you hear all the time in the movies. Some movies would be lost without dirty words.

And who decides which pictures to put in a dictionary? Here’s an umbrella. Why in the world do they think they have to illustrate an umbrella? They show a picture of a circle but they don’t have a picture of a square. Here’s a picture of Barbara Walters but none of Walter Cronkite. Now that’s not right.

Here’s a picture of O.J. Simpson. “American football player. First to run over 2,000 yards in a season.”

I wonder what Webster’s is going to say about O.J. in the next New American College Edition.

From Andy Rooney, Years of Minutes, pp. 285-286.