Friday, August 1, 2008
Words, Words, Words: Reading the OED
The editors of the NYT Book Review made a wise choice of reviewer in this review by Nicholson Baker of a book about someone who set to reading the OED from beginning to end.
Baker's fastidious wit and the appealing subject of words, magical words — defining the elusive complexity of experience — is a perfect fit. From what Baker says, the author Ammon Shea, is himself very funny.
The author says, “I feel as though I am eating the alphabet,” to which Baker comments: “This is the 'Super Size Me' of lexicography.”
Acnestis — the part of an animal’s back that the animal can’t reach to scratch… bespawl — to splatter with saliva…deipnophobia, the fear of dinner parties… kankedort, an awkward situation….There’s hypergelast (a person who won’t stop laughing), lant (to add urine to ale to give it more kick), obmutescence (willful speechlessness) and ploiter (to work to little purpose).
Words are so grounded in the day to day but seek to contain the metaphysical; words are unique, yet common in what they observe; words are acute with etymologically witty associations and so deeply connected to our common heritage; words sometimes reach to insight in defining the amorphous — and even higher still at times, in pointing to the poetical mystery of things.
They say each word is at first a stroke of genius.