Romance Readers Reading Challenges discussion
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When was the last time you were reading and stopped to check a dictionary?
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Oh it happens pretty much every other day Kate. But most of the time I don't bother looking it up. Too lazy for that. I look up words when they start to bug me. It feels like I should know what they mean; I've heard them around, yet I cannot quite explain the meaning. Like: asinine. That's the last one I remember looking up. Pretty obvious one, right? Embarrassing.
Every so often. I have two good dictionaries within reach of my favorite spot in the house (right here). But seeing as how the better of the two dictionaries (American College Dictionary) doesn't even have 'computer' in it (published in 1949), I look up a great number of things online. The lesser of the two dictionaries (Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 9th Edition) I purchased in my freshman year of college (1988 same as the published year) and it will do for most things.I think the last thing I looked up was 'pernicious - adj 1. hurtful or ruinous; 2. deadly or fatal; 3. wicked or evil.' I remember reading it and thinking I knew what it meant but also remembed the line from the Gene Wilder Willy Wonka movie where he explains that he saved the Oompa Loompas from the pernicious knids and had to know for sure. More meanings than I thought. I've been using it ever since.
Usually I have a general idea of what a word is so don't bother looking it up. For the one I posted above (salaaming), once I looked it up I can completely picture it and know exactly what it means, but I never knew there was a word for it. It was just a strange word, I had to stop reading and look it up.I tend to use a dictionary online simply because I'm too lazy to walk downstairs and get my 3 inch thick dictionary that I keep near the kids desks where they do homework. If they ever ask me to how to spell a word, I tell them to look it up. :) I got this very thick, very expensive dictionary in a drawing from a bookstore. They told me very few had entered. This was over 10 years ago.
I usually can get the gist of a words' meaning by the context and if not I will often be guilty of just assuming the meaning of a word. Otherwise, I will look it up online, but only if it has got to the point of annoying me not to know.My problem is mis-pronouncing words. I do it a LOT. I read a word, then when I tell someone about the story using that word or whatever, I find I am not pronouncing it right at all. Or I will hear someone else using the word and think "oh, that's how you say it."
Prime example: When playing trivial pursuit one of the questions involved the word "chihuahua" ïnstead of pronouncing it 'chi-wah-wah', I pronounced it "chi-who-a-who-a". In my defense I had heard the word but never seen it written, but my husband STILL gives me grief over it 25 years later.
I've always had poor vocabulary skills, so I have taken to keeping a document on my computer that has words/definitions I've learned that year ;)My 2009 document includes words like fop, pedantic, sardonic, etc. I feel like I'm finally filling in some of those gaps from my lack of reading for years.
Not often - mostly I'll look up a word if it isn't English and I want to know it's origins, or I'll look up a word just for the pleasure of knowing where it came from. Although, having said that, I was editing my romance newsletter the other week and the theme put me in mind of L. L. Foster's book in her Servant series (although generally she writes general romance or contemporary romance as Lori Foster) and I kinda enjoyed it. It's paranormal - I'm always a sucker for that. It didn't strike me as strange when I read it but I popped in to Amazon to look up customer reactions to it and ouch - people liked the storyline for the most part, but wondered if the author had swallowed a dictionary when writing it. One customer gave examples: "Annoying sedulousness", "Exigous weight", "endogenous perception", "calumnious statement", "And so went the banausic nature of her life." Kinda made me wonder why I didn't have a problem with that back when it came out so have yanked it out to read again. Probably I was distracted the hot detective LOL Geez
Rarely. I tend to read in the bedroom and the dictionary is in the office. Actually, most of the time that I use the (online) dictionary, it's to correctly spell a word I'm trying to type. Spell check doesn't always figure out some of my more creative mis-spellings.
Tosca, it does sound a bit like the author swallowed a dictionary. lol
I'm reading Mash A Novel About Three Army Doctors by Richard Hooker.
"Yes, sir!" they said, salaaming as they went.
sa⋅laam /səˈlɑm/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [suh-lahm:] –noun 1. a salutation meaning “peace,” used esp. in Islamic countries.
2. a very low bow or obeisance, esp. with the palm of the right hand placed on the forehead.