People and things of authority
Detentive: Able to Detain
Installment #1 of a new publication spelunking the OED
Recently, I found a copy of the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) — at the Goodwill Bins, no less, for just a couple of bucks. I’ve always wanted to own the OED, but it’s ungodly expensive and bulky. This edition is the same as the twenty-plus-volume one, only it’s printed in nearly microscopic text and requires a magnifying glass to read. But basically, it contains every official word in the English language.
This publication is here to assist me in reading through it regularly. So, let’s dive in with the first installment, having randomly opened it up.
Before I begin, here are my criteria for selecting words to highlight and write about:
- It has to be an interesting (to me) word;
- It has to be a word I didn’t know;
- It should be a “red squiggly” word — meaning it’ll get flagged as a possible misspelling because browsers and other web editors don’t know it, like so:
***UPDATE***: After a few months of doing this, I’ve largely stuck to the above “rules.” But, I haven’t paid much attention to the “red squiggly” aspect. If you read these entries from here on out, you’ll see that the entries have evolved…
