Reading the OED Quotes

“. . .what does the computer know of the comforting weight of a book in one's lap? Or of the excitement that comes from finding a set of books, dusty and tucked away in the back corner of some store? The computer can only reproduce the information in a book, and never the joyful experience of reading it.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“One of the questions I hear most often regarding my plan to read the OED from cover to cover is "Why don't you just read it on the computer?" I usually respond as if the questions was "Why don't you just slump yourself on the couch and watch TV for the year?" which is not quite an appropriate reponse. It is not so much that I am anicomputer; I am resolutely and stubbornly pro-book.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Quomodocunquize (v.) To make money in any way possible. A number of the odd and fantastic words in the OED seem to have been either first used or popularized by Sir Thomas Urquhart. When reading the citation of his that the OED uses to illustrate this word, it is hard for me to understand why we do not commonly use more of his favorite words. Even if you have no real idea what his meaning is, the sentiment is unmistakable and beautifully indelible: “Those quomodocunquizing clusterfists and rapacious varlets.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Charientism (n.) A rhetorical term to describe saying a disagreeable thing in an agreeable way.

If I knew how to say disagreeable things in an agreeable fashion I most likely would not be spending most of my time siting alone in a room, reading the dictionary.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Along with tableity (the condition of being a table) and paneity (the state of being bread), cellarhood is a wonderful example of the spectacular ways English has of describing things that no ever thinks it necessary to describe.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“I find myself subject to the entire range of emotions and reactions that a great book will call forth from its reader. I chuckle, laugh out loud, smile wistfully, cringe, widen my eyes in surprise, and even feel sadness--all from the neatly ordered rows of words and their explanations. All of the human emotions and experiences are right here in this dictionary, just as they would be in any fine work of literature. They just happen to be alphabetized.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Contrary to what many self-help books would have you believe, adding a great number of obscure words to your vocabulary will not help you advance in the world. You will not gain new friends through this kind of endeavor, nor will it help you in the workplace.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Reading on a computer screen gives you no sense of time or investment. The page always looks the same, and everything is always in the same exact spot. When reading the book, no matter how large or small it is, a tension builds, concurrent with your progress through its pages. I get a nervous excitement as I see the number of pages that remain to be read draining inexorably from the right to the left.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Tricoteuse (n.) A woman who knits; specifically, a woman who during the French Revolution would attend the guillotinings and knit while the heads were rolling. What I’ve learned from reading the OED has not been confined to vocabulary. I’ve also learned a good deal about the history of the unpleasantness of the human race, including the portrait of this unsympathetic character, the knitter who attends beheadings. Tripudiate”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Sesquihoral (adj.) Lasting an hour and a half. Because sometimes you just don’t feel like saying “an hour and a half.” Short-thinker”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Preantepenult (adj.) Not the last, not the one before the last, and not the one before the one before the last. The next one. A sterling example of how it often can be far more confusing to use one word than several. It is far easier to say “the third from the last” than preantepenult. Prend”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“The OED does include schadenfreude, a word borrowed from German, which means “to take pleasure in the misfortune of another.” But it left out one of my personal favorites, epicharicacy, which means the same thing as schadenfreude, and was in English dictionaries until the early nineteenth century. Misdevout”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Minimifidian (n.) A person who has the bare minimum of faith (in something). To the minimifidian the secret to happiness lies in the doctrine of lowered expectations. Which is not the worst way to go through life; it’s hard to be disappointed when you never expect anything. Minionette”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“And so, there is something interesting about the word gove. The OED defines it as “to stare stupidly.” So do Funk and Wagnalls, the Century Dictionary, and the Imperial Dictionary. In fact, every dictionary I have checked defines this word as “to stare stupidly” except for Webster’s Third New International, which defines it as “to stare idly.” I am quite sure that the fact that the editor of Webster’s Third was named Gove had nothing to do with this decision. also”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Anglo-Saxon tends not to lend itself to long and elaborate words that have strung together three or four affixes to create a rhetorical term for a very obscure thing. While”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Vocabularian (n.) One who pays too much attention to words. In the past I have been accused by various parties of paying too much attention to words. Which is true, I suppose; but what else do I have to pay attention to? Vomiturient”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Vicambulist (n.) One who walks about in the streets. Now that streetwalker has taken on connotations some people may not care to ascribe to themselves, we have a dearth of words to describe someone who simply likes to walk about in the streets of a city. Here’s hoping vicambulist will enter everyday language anew. also”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Vanitarianism (n.) The pursuing of vanities. Only one citation is provided for this word, and it comes, rather unsurprisingly, from Thackeray, a writer who seems to have an unreasoning fondness for the word vanity. also”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Unasinous (adj.) Being equal to another in stupidity. If you are uncertain how one might use this word, just think of any two political parties. also”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Supervacaneous (adj.) Vainly added over and above what is needed. This word is in some way an example of itself, a redundant way of saying redundant, with a touch of vanity thrown in for good measure. Surfeited”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Silentiary (n.) An official whose job it is to command silence. I would like to have my very own silentiary, someone I can bring to the library and to the apartment next door. Sitzfleisch”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Repertitious has not had nearly the success in entering the language that serendipitous has had, most likely because its PR team isn’t nearly as good. The noun form of the latter, serendipity, was made up in the 1750s by the novelist Horace Walpole, based on Serendip (a former name for Sri Lanka). Repertitious, on the other hand, has its first mention in Thomas Blount’s dictionary of 1656. Writers—1, lexicographers—0. Resentient”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Rejoy has several meanings, the first two of which are somewhat noble, and more than somewhat boring. The third meaning, however, is probably the most applicable one for most people, as so many of us cannot seem to enjoy things unless we possess them. Which explains the existence of shopping malls. Remord”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Redeless (adj.) Not knowing what to do in an emergency. Redeless has a variety of meanings, but this is the one that speaks to me the most. In yet another case of the rare thing enjoying a common word and vice versa, it is interesting to note that redeless has largely (or entirely) fallen by the linguistic wayside, while savoir faire (which originally meant “knowing what to do in an emergency”) has survived. Redonation”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Petecure (n.) Modest cooking; cooking on a small scale. Very few people eat in an epicurean fashion, yet many of them know what the word epicure means. A great many people eat in a simple fashion, and yet no one knows the word for this. Petrichor”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Parabore (n.) A defense against bores. It would be a very lovely thing indeed if there existed some magical device that you could carry around with you to ward off bores. The closest thing to this I have seen is a contraption Alix gave me a few years back: a little black box on a key chain that will turn off every nearby TV with the push of a button. I carried it with me everywhere and used it whenever I came across that particular form of boredom. Paracme”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Onomatomania (n.) Vexation at having difficulty in finding the right word. Finding a word that so perfectly describes a rather large portion of my everyday existence is one of the things that makes reading the dictionary feel like an intensely personal endeavor. The book is no longer merely a list of words; suddenly it is a catalog of the foibles of the human condition, and it is speaking directly to me. Of course, as soon as I learned this word I promptly forgot what it was, but this just provided me with the frustration of not being able to think of it, and then the satisfaction of once again finding it. also”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Mislove manages the neat trick of having two meanings that are almost opposite each other. While this is not an uncommon phenomenon (for example, left can refer to both having departed and remaining), words in this category are usually significantly more boring than mislove. Monodynamic”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“In the OED editors’ defense, they have set out to accomplish something that is inherently impossible—to record the entirety of a language. It is only natural they should occasionally come across words that are virtually indefinable, or that have meanings that have been lost to the ages. Whatever failings or inconsistencies the editors may exhibit are certainly not for lack of effort. James Murray in particular was renowned for attempting to ferret out knowledge, writing letters to every authority he could think of and posting queries in newspapers begging for information on a word. When I read the definition of lege de moy (“App. the name of some dance”) I cannot help but imagine that they must have spent a tremendous amount of time looking for the meaning and roots of this word before one of the editors finally threw his hands up in disgust and exclaimed, “What the hell—just say it’s some kind of dance or something, and let’s get to the pub.” As”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Several letters pass and I discover what is perhaps my favorite definition of all in the OED: disghibelline (“To distinguish, as a Guelph from a Ghibelline”). When I first read this I was convinced one of the editors had brought his children to work one day, and they amused themselves by creating nonsense definitions for the dictionary, and this one somehow slipped in. This time I could not resist, and went off in search of what Guelphs and Ghibellines are. It turns out they were competing political parties in Italy, a very long time ago, and disghibelline is in fact a real definition.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages