Tuesday November 13th 2018

Our language is disappearing. At work we are having a rationalisation of resource usage. I kid you not. Or, possibly better known, a good old clear out. For imminently many Workplace Health and Safety wraiths with drift across the threshold looking for tripping errors in the fine tuned running of the creative hub. Centre stage in this de-cluttering is seeing the removal of rakish towering books piled high in the 'Arts' office. Many come from publishers eager to promote a D list writer. Countless volumes of 'My Incredible Life Selling Saucepans in 50's Yorkshire' flop onto the virtual mat. Some however like this Collins English Dictionary are, or should I say were, a journeyman programme makers tools of reference.  

So let me ask you dear reader, when was the last time you used a dictionary? For myself, I can't remember.

I say this as caught up in the cathartic removal process, this leviathan (bought in 2003) now languishes as an underpinning to a rakish towering pile labelled 'for the charity shop'. I stared at it. A brute of a book, almost too heavy to lift, yet it's pages seem white, unsullied by workaday hands, pristine. During its 15 years residing dust thickened on a shelf, has anyone ever looked through its 1872 pages? In the dying embers of it's physical existence, I opened it randomly. As a youth I often used to do this. Taking my parents well used dictionary off the shelf, I'd casually open it, just to see what words were in there. Not to add to my learning to spell, though that might have improved things considerably in later life, but to simply look at words. Words I didn't know. Words how they looked on the page. Words how they sounded. I repeated this long forgotten joy today. Quickly opening the book, I scanned two pages pertaining to the letter M. Lost in the superlatives of the English language such as Mangle, Mangoldwurzle, and Mangetout was MANDAMOUS - a legal term, 'a superior court commanding an inferior tribunal, public official, corporation etc to carry out a public duty. It's derivation from the the latin mandare - literally to command.'

And there it was. The joy of finding a word I didn't know, MANDAMOUS... sounding like a gender unspecific parent rodent, Ma-n-Da-Mous. I shall use that in conversation soon. How much more educational than quickly going on-line to check the spelling of a word. This is why we should embrace the now dinosaur era of dictionaries. Yes they are archaic, yes you need to be able to spell the word to first find it, but as a lexicon of boundless quest into the language of words, they are in my mind....Mandala to my understanding of the World we live in... look it up, it's before your very eyes.

  

 

So let me ask you dear reader, when was the last time you used a dictionary? For myself, not 24 hours ago!