The Dictionary of Lost Words

by Pip Williams

“What happens to the words that are left out?” “They go back in the pigeon-holes. If there isn’t enough information about them, they’re discarded.” “But they might be forgotten if they’re not in the Dictionary.” He’d tilted his head to one side and looked at me, as if I’d said something important. “Yes, they might.”

Four slips with various quotations were pinned to the word menstruate. The top-slip gave it two definitions: To discharge the catamenia and To pollute as with menstrual blood. Da had mentioned the first, but not the second. Menstruosity was the condition of being menstruous. And menstruous had once meant horribly filthy or polluted. Menstruous. Like monstrous. It came closest to explaining how I felt.

My goodness, the twentieth century! I think this is the first time I have written it down. It will be your century, Esme, and it will be different from mine. You will need to know more.

You are correct in your observation that words in common use that are not written down would necessarily be excluded. Your concern that some types of words, or words used by some types of people, will be lost to the future is really quite perceptive.

All words are not equal (and as I write this, I think I see your concern more clearly: if the words of one group are considered worthier of preservation than those of another…well, you have given me pause for thought).

“Problem is, Esme, you’re scared of the wrong thing. Without the vote nothing we say matters, and that should terrify you.”

“Choice would be a fine thing, but from where I stand things look much the same as they always have. If you’ve got choices, Esme, choose well.”

Lizzie was different, or perhaps it was just that now I saw her differently, as a woman who existed beyond my need for her.

We looked at the mess of slips inside the trunk. I remembered all the times I’d searched the volumes and the pigeon-holes for just the right word to explain what I was feeling, experiencing. So often, the words chosen by the men of the Dictionary had been inadequate.

Of some experiences, the Dictionary would only ever provide an approximation. Sorrow, I already knew, was one of them.

Among the propaganda of glory, and the men’s experiences of the trenches and death, something needed to be known of what happened to women.

Was that what it meant to be a daughter? To have hair that smelled of your mother’s? To use the same soap? Or was it a shared passion, a shared frustration?