I has been almost a year where the project I start with this article has existed only in my head. It started with obsession with the dictionary, something I have a small collection of. Dictionaries both physical and in pdf form, ranging from the year 1722 to 2022, and use them to sort out my thoughts and maybe find something new about which I should learn. For an example when researchers in a California University had a net positive change in electrical energy using a fusion reactor, I took to my Webster’s NewWorld Compact School and Office Dictionary (1982) to get a better understanding. So, what exactly is my project? Well, it is to write a dictionary of my own of course.
This will not happen in one sitting, nor do I think it will be complete in one life time, but nothing is completed without being started first. This project will be two-fold. It will be a way for me to study for the EAS Master Beekeeper exam by defining and writing about bees and bee-keeping in excruciation detail. It will also be the base for my blog posts one of which you are reading now.
This project also, in a way, is a protest to the standards we have set for ourselves in the information age. Today, we have access to the world’s information in such an extraordinary way. Which is ironic because we, as a people, probably said the same thing when the printing press was invented and libraries where founded. But unlike today that invention facilitated ownership of the texts that were and are important to a person. This project is protest of ownership. I own my dictionaries therefor I control them. Similar to how people owned and kept in their home an encyclopedia set, a dictionary, and a religious text.
When I write I have a reference of a word and can ensure that from the time it is written to the time it was published that reference has not changed or been updated. This way you, my reader, if you ever do not understand what I mean by the use of a word you can simply ask me or refer to the citation below. Never use a dictionary to which the writer did not have access or intended to use to ensure you are grasping the intended meaning, not the meaning that is implied with your own vernacular. It is a courtesy we give to old titles because of the known and obvious changes in language, but we seldom give to those living in a difference region of the world or in a different generation that may use words differently.
Today I want to define three words all of which are used in my past article Wordsmithing; a case for the use of the Hyphened bee-keeper published on my personal blog.
- Bee: (1) insect that produces honey; (2) Honey Bee, Apis spp.
- Keeper: (1) as a person that keeps; (2) to provide for, support (3) to guard or tend; (4) to maintain.
- Have: (1) to hold, own, possess; to possess as a part; (2) to experience; (3) to hold in mind; (4) to engage in; (5) to permit as.
Questions for you
That dictionaries do you own? What books are in your personal library?
Patrick’s Shower Thoughts
With computing technology and hard drives the way they are, we could have that ever the library of Babylon was in our back pocket.
Works Citied
Guralnik, David B; Webster’s NewWorld Compact School and Office Dictionary (1982)
