Reading the entire dictionary from front to back! Something I’ve always wanted to try. We’ve made it to the letter I, which will make for some weird-looking sentences in print, but what can you do?
It’s one of most common words, especially for those of us who write in first person, but the dictionary keeps it simple with I as “the one speaking or writing.” It’s also a symbol for “island,” “iodine,” “interstate,” and “imaginary unit.” What gets measured in imaginary units, exactly? Health potions?
Beyond that, the first “real” word under I is ibex, “any of several Old World wild goats with large curved horns.” Does that mean there are New World goats? This is followed by a new one for me, ibidem, which is just “in the same place.” Does this mean ibex can gather ibidem?
There’s half a page devoted to ice and words with an “ice” prefix. It’s “frozen water,” “a flavored frozen dessert,” and “a substance resembling ice.” Again I ask, is it cheating to use a word in its own definition? Ice is also a metaphor, “a state of coldness (as from formality or reserve.)”
Identity gets an oddly-worded definition, “the sameness of essential character” and “the fact of being the same person or thing as claimed.” The use of “same” and “sameness” sounds rather Orwellian to me.
An idiot is “a foolish or stupid person,” as you can imagine. But this is one of those definitions that has the word’s origin in parenthesis. From the Greek idiotes, “one in a private station, layman, ignorant person; and idios, “one’s own, private.” Does this mean that in ancient times, people who were loners were automatically considered dumb? I don’t like that.
Now it’s biology lesson time, with ileum, “the part of the small intestine between the jejunum and the large intestine,” followed by ilium, “the uppermost and largest of the three bones making up either side of the pelvis.” I’ll go ahead and be thankful this is a dictionary without those little illustrations.
There are thirteen definitions for ill, and it’s not until the thirteenth that we get “ailment, sickness.” Others include “attended or caused by evil intent,” and “in a faulty way.” This kicks off almost two pages of words with the “ill-” prefix.
The dictionary goes all out with imagination, “the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or not previously known or experienced.” Did Alan Moore write this one?
This section is all about the prefixes, because next is a long runner of words with an “imm-” beginning. The book keeps things simple with immoral being “not moral,” and immortal being “not mortal.” There’s a lot of genre fiction about immortals having skewed morals, so that tracks.
Similarly, importance is “the quality or state of being important,” while important is “marked by importance,” and “giving an impression of importance.” It’s also important to go around in circles, apparently.
Then we go inside the word in, which gets a whopping twenty definitions, most of them similar. “Used to indicate physical surroundings” seems to cover it for me. This starts several pages with the “in-“ prefix, including another footnote-like list of words without definitions running along the bottom of the page, just so you’ll know how to spell them. Seeing inactive, inaccessible, and inartistic grouped together feels like a bummer.
Next: Let’s everybody get infallible.
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