You Can Look It Up: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition

Although you may not think about it much, a dictionary can be an essential thing to have for a person writing and editing. I have used my desk dictionary at times to break a case of writer's block by looking up words at random. I soon get so wrapped up in the definitions I begin to want to write something. Try it - it works.

I also have for many years had a lazy habit of skipping over words that are not totally familiar to me if I can get the general sense of the sentence by looking at the context. With a dictionary on my desk, I can and do stop and look up those unfamiliar words and add them to my vocabulary.

Speaking of vocabulary - you can never have enough, in my opinion. However, since the advent of television I would say vocabulary has gone down at the same rate as reading has diminished. And no, comic book consumption does not constitute reading, at least not at the level that reading vocabulary building literature would.

And the television is not alone to blame: I would also add the word processor's spelchiker to the devices that are adding to the mounting illiteracy problem. Get a dictionary, look some words up - it will definitely realign your thinking to learning mode, like magic. I promise you.

Interestingly, Merriam-Webster claims they have added 10,000 NEW words to the eleventh edition. This is of the total 165,000 words listed, making about 6% of the current entries never before considered words. Words like gimme, phat, Botox, dead presidents, and identity theft are now in the dictionary. Somehow, I didn't need to look any of those words up - *sigh.* My own bias would be to make older words more accessible rather than legitimizing slang, but what do I know?

Since 1843, Merriam-Webster have been updating Webster's dictionary, and they are quick to point out that they are the REAL Webster's dictionary, even though you can buy other dictionaries labeled "Webster," only Merriam-Webster is the heir to Noah Webster's famous Dictionary of the English Language, which is what everybody means when they mention Webster's Dictionary.

The eleventh edition also comes with the dictionary in CD-ROM form, if you should want to load it onto your PC or MAC - it works on either. This feature offers a crutch in that you type the first few letters of a word and a pick list pops up. Also, the synonyms and antonyms are easily accessible making this work something like a thesaurus, also.

Today, even though the dictionary is available on line for free there is still a crying need for reference books, like dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia. People just learn better by looking something up themselves, I don't know why, but it works for me. And for less than $20 you can build your own or your child's vocabulary - how hard a decision is that?