![]() ![]() I’m sure my aunt will come to me though I’m unsure still what form she’ll take. They bob up or pass by (“ passant = passing, transitory, transient, fugitive”) regularly when I’m at the beach, and I’m grateful. ![]() I like the idea that the people I’ve loved and lost come around in one form or another in an effort to stay in touch with me. I’m so grateful to have this 20-volume “toy” to play word games with (more ambitious than it sounds) and I hope my aunt comes to me in some form or another (a seal or heron is nice, though my dad actually claimed the latter when he died, and my grandmother the former….) so I can thank her. Here’s a typical OED entry, with guides for how to read it. Both are subject to interpretation, despite the precision with which editors of dictionaries and encyclopedias (as well as genealogical experts) like to operate. its wild-animal, unpredictable nature and its “straggling” and “diffuse” parameters.)Įtymology is not unlike genealogy – both words and people have roots that ground them, histories which make an effort to explain them, and spirits which animate them. My friends and I sometimes gave each other writing prompts that involved the OED, searching through the surprising etymological roots of a given word, then spinning the root a new direction, gathering fresh images and using phrases in surprising and odd ways (and what does “Say it new” really involve if not oddities and surprises?) The OED is perfect for exploring the “brute” side of language (i.e. Never thought I would own the complete set, pricey as it is, though I used to dream about it, especially when I was studying poetry in grad school, exploring language at the level of the word, the syllable, the glorious etymologies. It sprawls, in fact, and I’m having fun with it. I feel a poem coming on….Īll this gets jotted down in my notebook because I just inherited from a beloved aunt a complete 20-volume set of the Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition – definitely NOT the “compact” nor the “concise” versions. I like the way it sounds – almost counter-intuitive. ![]() Even so, the idea of “compact memory” intrigues me. ![]() Hale: “The Humane Nature.hath a more fixed, strong, and compact memory of things past than the Brutes have.” Since “the Brutes” can’t talk, I’m not sure how Mr. The word was used in 1676 by someone named M. “Compact” – from the Latin compactus, past participle of compingere meaning to put together closely ( com+ pangere = to make fast, to fasten.) Used as an adjective = Having the parts so arranged that the whole lies within relatively small compass, without straggling portions or members nearly and tightly packed or arranged not sprawling, scattered, or diffuse. ![]()
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