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“The novel you’ve been waiting for without even realizing it…Williams
“Intriguing…The Dictionary of Lost Words is a searching, feminist exploration of how class and gender affect the boundaries of language.
sweeping coming-of-age story, set against a tumultuous time in British history, is a historical fiction fan’s dream.”
“A
name must mean something to be in the Dictionary.”
Some words are more important than others—I learned this, growing up in the Scriptorium. But it took me a long time to understand why.
facing all the
words and all the men who helped him define them.
scapegrace
“Ala-ed-Din and the Wonderful Lamp,”
bondmaid.
“They’re just not solid enough.” I frowned, and he said, “Not enough
people have written them down.”
“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.”
Cabbage
“Your mother would have had the words to explain the world to you, Essy,” Da said.
“But without her, we must rely on the Scrippy.”
“This resolve was soon eroded when he realised that one enquiry only gave occasion to
another, that book referred to book, that to scratch was not always to find, and to find was not always to be informed.”
Ditte had no children and lived in Bath with her sister, Beth. She was very busy finding quotations for Dr. Murray and writing her history of England, but she still had time to send me letters and bring me gifts.
“We are not the arbiters of the English language, sir. Our job, surely, is to chronicle, not judge.”
“But when we talk about her, she comes to life.”
“Never forget that, Esme. Words are our tools of resurrection.”
“And that you will always take my side, even when I’m troublesome.”
“Words change over time, you see. The way they look, the way they sound; sometimes even their meaning changes. They have their own history.”
“So you and Dr. Murray could make the words mean whatever you want them to mean, and we’ll all have to use them that way forever?”
Some people feel better about themselves if they can pull others down a bit.
scapegrace
If I read them all, I thought, maybe I would make more sense.
“Me needlework will always be here,” she said. “I see this and I feel…well, I don’t know
the word. Like I’ll always be here.”
“Permanent,” I said. “And the rest of the time?” “I feel like a dandelion just...
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COUNT “I count you for a fool.”—Tennyson, 1859
It wasn’t fair that I was in trouble when Mr. Crane had been so careless. The words were duplicates, I was sure—common
My trunk is like the Dictionary, I thought. Except it’s full of words that have been lost or neglected.
The Dictionary of Lost Words. It took me all afternoon to scratch it inside the lid of the trunk.
“They’s just words, Esme.”
My mother was like a word with a thousand slips.
As to your parenting being unconventional, well, I suppose that it is, but where Mr. Crane meant it as a rebuke, I mean it as a compliment. Convention has never done any woman any good.
“Literately” was used in a novel by Elizabeth Griffiths. While no other examples of use have been forthcoming, it is, in my opinion, an elegant extension of “literate.” Dr. Murray agreed I should write an entry for the Dictionary, but I have since been told it is unlikely to be included. It seems our lady author has not proved herself a “literata”—an abomination of a word coined by Samuel
Taylor Coleridge that refers to a “literary lady.”
The number of literary ladies in the world is surely so great as to render them ordinary and deserving members of the literati.
It will be your century, Esme, and it will be different from mine. You will need to know more.
When I returned the envelopes to the box, they were empty of words—but never more meaningful.
He’d had a letter from his sister, my real aunt.
“They say I wasn’t alone.”
you’re not going to get married, then why not aim to become an editor?” Mr. Sweatman asked. “I’m a girl,” I said, annoyed at his teasing.
“Should that matter?”
Bodleian,
forgo.
