“What’s another word for ‘thesaurus’?” – Steven Wright
Why would someone buy me a book only to laugh at me for reading it?
Once upon a Christmas, my parents gave me a paperback thesaurus. Truth is, they gave me a gigantic pile of toys, clothes and whatever else a girl aged in single digits could ask for. What I remember best is the thesaurus, its companion dictionary – and an illustrated book of Aesop’s fables.
I thought the thesaurus was the coolest thing I’d ever seen – even the word was thrillingly Paleozoic, and sported one of those extravagant Latin plurals. I suspect I’d only recently learned about synonyms and antonyms in English class. I carried my new treasure everywhere in the days after Christmas, wandering purposefully from “spend” to “squander” to “waste” to “lavish”, getting lost among shades of meaning.
Until I got caught, that is.
I didn’t know that reading the thesaurus was a source of shame and ridicule. It seemed perfectly normal to me, and there was no warning on the cover – I checked. Still, my family found it riotously funny – the kind of story with which you regale your friends at the country club. I resolved never to embarrass myself that way again.
But I loved it so! What would I do without access to words like autochthonous (aw-TOCK-thin-us), which is both fun to say and fancy for “indigenous”, which in turn is fiddly for “from around here”? How else will I discover the most hidebound, prim word for “stuffy”, or select the synonym for “silly” with the right balance of juvenile and inane? And why am I the only one who finds this fun?
I know: I’ll pretend to read Aesop’s fables whenever someone comes in the room…
It’s probably best this happened well before personal computing took root. I can still lose an afternoon to the online thesaurus in Microsoft Word, and using it still feels forbidden and daring after all this time. Years ago a friend gave me a Random House dictionary on CD-ROM that pronounces words for you. I was in nerd heaven. For about a week, an official-sounding pronounceticator hailed innocent visitors to my office as “DUNDERHEAD!”
Now that’s a good time.
2 comments:
Cat, on Sunday I found myself turning my computer on just to see if you had released a new chapter of your addictive 'here's the thing'...took me a couple of minutes to get over the fact I had already read what was there and to "forgive" you for not having released anything new, and just when I was in the process of realizing how unreal my thoughts were, my sister calls me and says - what's taking Cat so long? I'm dying to read her next post - LOL - This has really become a treat. It's like taking a break in the middle of the afternoon for a cup of coffee. It really makes my day.
Cat, thank you for your love of words, it has made communicating with you that much more delicious and your blogs a world to revel in.
And following your previous post - This Is one of your many talents and skills.
We often take for granted that which comes naturally to us, and yet for another it appears that we have a gift of extraordinary talent and richness.
See the light in you, and I'm glad that through this blog we can reflect it back to you, more directly :)
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