What an exciting day we have with page six of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition! Although I must admit, it’s not a very good dictionary. I often have to consult other dictionaries to figure out what a word means. That’s definitely true of today’s word: agglutinate.

Offline Latin

Over the past few days, I’ve been very glad to have A Latin-English Dictionary for the Use of Junior Students. I picked it up at a thrift store years ago when I was writing a play about Latin. I have the Thirteenth Edition, which is from 1898. But it must have been a best-seller because it was up to the Twenty-fourth Edition by 1915. Regardless, it’s far more dependable than Google Translate. Of course, Latin is a late edition to the system. But you would think: Latin. That ought to be an easy one. I mean it gets Spanish and Italian and they are just Latin++. What’s the big deal?

Beyond Agglutinate

There were other interesting words. “Agio” is supposedly the fee charged by brokers to turn coin into cash. So that’s what those awful machines are charging. And it’s like 8.9 percent, which is an outrage! But this is the page that includes a personal favorite of mine: agoraphobia. Most people will never know the thrill of being freaked out by an empty parking lot!

Instead, you have have to settle for thrilling to the word “agglutinate”:

The Real Meaning of Agglutinate

Dictionary.com defines agglutination as, “a process of word formation in which morphemes, each having one relatively constant shape, are combined without fusion or morphophonemic change, and in which each grammatical category is typically represented by a single morpheme in the resulting word, especially such a process involving the addition of one or more affixes to a base, as in Turkish, in which ev means ‘house,’ ev-den means ‘from a house,’ and ev-ler-den means ‘from houses.'” So now you understand that business about Turkish!

I am now on page five of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition. Do you know what that means? Word that start with “ae.” And that also means a lot of, “See [word that starts with “e”].

I was struck by the definition of a fairly common word: aesthete. I do know that people very often use it as a pejorative. But I was still struck with this: “a lover of beautiful things, especially to the scornful exclusion of practicalities.” Ouch! Why is it necessary to throw “scornful” in there? It makes aesthetes sound like monsters!

Other Good Words

There were other good words as well. “Advalorem” has something to do with the value of something for the purpose of an import tax. There was also “afferent,” which has something to do with a nerve impulse toward the inside of the body. So maybe when you touch something, the signal moves in an afferent way? I don’t know. And I don’t have to know. It isn’t today’s word!

Today’s word is a great one: afflatus.

I had a much better time with page four of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition. There were a handful of words I didn’t know. In particular, did you know there’s a word for a lack of perspiration? There is: adiaphoresis.

But the page does bring up something I said earlier: that if you get past 50,000 words, you’re basically down to different kinds of fish. Most of the words I don’t know are technical — usually medical. At this point, I’m thinking that I may actually have a vocabulary of 50,000 words. That’s a shocking thought. Where are they? And do I really need all those little buggers clogging up my brain? Certainly I don’t use them for writing.

How Long Can This Go On?

To be honest, I’m not sure how long I can keep this all up. The words aren’t that interesting. And dealing with the definitions is a real pain. That’s especially true because I’m trying to stay as close to the book as possible. And the type is so small and my eyes so bad that I can’t use the book while writing because the light isn’t good enough.

Regardless, I have a science word for you today. And given what it is, it’s surprising that I didn’t know it: actinism.

It’s only day three of this series and it is having the exact opposite effect on me as I expected. It’s making me feel full of myself. The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition is a dictionary, but not one with trivial words like “about” and “the.” Yet I’m finding that I know 95 percent of the words.

Learning Words

The funny thing is that I’ve recently reconnected with an old friend, Mark Neville. When I first met him, I was perhaps 20 years old. And I was struggling to improve my vocabulary, looking forward to eventually taking the SAT. I had a list of about 20 words that I was trying to learn. And Mark knew them all. I never did memorize those words.

But something changed around that time. I started reading a lot more — and widely. And if you want to develop your vocabulary, that’s the way to do it: read. Then you learn words without even trying. But I do remember struggling through some George Eliot with a dictionary close by. And much later, I did the same thing when I was going through a William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor phase. But mostly, you just learn the words without thinking much about it. And that’s much more pleasant than memorizing words out of context.

I Suffer From Acouasm

I could have gone with “acariasis” — but I don’t want to think about mites right now. Anyway, there was a much better word: “acouasm.” I have these all the time. I assume most people do. But if you don’t, it doesn’t mean I’m crazy. In fact, I don’t even know why you would suggest that. Really, there’s nothing wrong with me. Those doctors don’t know what they’re talking about anyway. I’m fine. Really, I am!

Not Feeling Too Good

I’ll bet you anything Mark already knew that word!

After the first page of The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition, I thought these Odd Words posts would be easy! (Well, not easy; creating the definitions with all the odd characters is actually rather hard.) But then I flipped the page and there were only two words I didn’t know.

The one I didn’t go for was “abulia” which is a mental disorder characterized by a loss of willpower. But that one hits a little too close to home. Also, I don’t really see it as a disorder. Schopenhauer would doubtless have called it a rational response to the absurdity of existence. I work obsessively, and that strikes me as far more of a disorder. So let us say no more about it.

Today’s word, as you may have guessed, has something to do with the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, I could find no pictures of an actual ablegate. So we are stuck with Cardinal George Pell. What’s important about the image is what it doesn’t contain.

I’m starting a new series today: Odd Words. I got the idea last night because I was very tired and didn’t feel like writing. So I grabbed a book I bought ages ago but never opened, The New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words: Revised Edition. The book is literally falling part. I’m using its cover as a bookmark. But it’s fascinating.

I like dictionaries. It doesn’t matter if you know the words. We know words more by how they are used than by their definitions. I constantly find myself wishing to use a slightly uncommon word. But then I wonder, “Is this what I mean?” So I look it up. And in almost all cases, I’m using the word perfectly. But it’s always a joy to see the odd words laid out so simply — so directly.

Words I Don’t Know: Abiogenesis

But I found something interesting on the first page of the Everyday Reader’s Dictionary. Of the 20 words, there were 5 that I didn’t know at all. And I learned new things about words I did know. For example, did you know that abalone is a kind of snail? Abalone is very popular here in northern California. The smell of it alone, makes me sick, so I’ve never tasted it. But I am looking forward to asking people the next time I find myself around it, “How are you enjoying your snail?”

Today’s word is “abiogenesis.”

Back Off!

Now before anyone says it: yes, I could have pieced that word together. As a matter of fact, I’ve got to have been exposed to it, because certainly Carl Sagan must have mentioned it in The Dragons of Eden. But the truth is that I’ve never had a huge vocabulary. Nor do I want one. After you get past about 50,000 words, you’re in “types of fish” territory.

So if you already know words that come up in this category, good for you! But don’t scoff or feel too proud. You’ll just look small. And if you’re very nasty, I’ll give you a differential equation to solve!