Third time is the charm, ain't it

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, dictionaries, short biographies, lexicography

When I was a kid, we'd sometimes poke fun at someone's diction by chanting, "'Ain't' ain't a word 'cause it ain't in the dictionary." Then in my sophomore year, the high school library obtained a copy of the latest "big dictionary," Webster's Third International (to use its short title). Some smart aleck or other looked in it right away, and came running out to say, "Hey, now 'ain't' is in the dictionary!" We all had to run in to see. Sure enough, big as life:

I crept back in later and checked in a few other dictionaries, something I had not considered doing before. Surprise! "Ain't" was in each and every one!! The new dictionary was remarkable only in what it left out: a notification that "ain't" was colloquial, or substandard, or "to be deprecated", and though it did say "disapproved by many", it seemed to approve, noting its use by "many cultivated speakers". As a much-abused nerdy kid, I knew well enough to keep that discovery to myself.

Unbeknownst to all of us kids, the publication of Webster's Third (W3) by the Merriam Co. triggered a controversy that is still not quite over. A debate or dispute is a short-term affair, but a controversy can go on and on, particularly when it touches on matters of tradition. Then, like the centuries-long arguments about the Trinity, the self-worth of touchy intellectuals gets called into question, and the fray outlasts the original participants.

The scope of the W3 controversy is ably canvassed by David Skinner in The Story of Ain't: America, its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published. It is no spoiler to mention that anti-W3 material has been published as recently as 2011, a full fifty years after the dictionary was issued. This book is neither pro- nor anti-W3, but is rather a history of the making of the volume, and the story of the principal characters surrounding it.

About the first half of the book's 40 chapters consist of mini-biographies of more than twenty men, and a woman or two. The central figures in the drama are Philip Gove, editor of W3, and Dwight Macdonald, who wrote the most damning (and still quoted) attack upon it. Equally important are William A. Nielson, who edited the predecessor volume (W2) that was issued in 1934, and Charles C. Fries, a pioneer of scientific linguistics. Ordinarily, I am quite put off by biography (I very seldom read one), but Skinner has woven the little biographies together in a most readable way. I still found that it took me a few extra days to read.

Scientific Linguistics remains a difficult issue, partly because no two linguists agree on just what it is. Some years ago a friend of mine was working towards a PhD in linguistics, under a professor who is a structuralist, and claims that as the most scientific approach. C.C. Fries would have damned him for ignoring empirical data about current usage in favor of theories about "generation" of language as promoted by Noam Chomsky. Philip Gove followed Fries's lead (by the way, grammarians are an equally contentious breed, and some would condemn me for that apostrophe-s, claiming the proper possessive is Fries'), basing his instructions to contributors on empiricism.

Where earlier dictionaries, particularly W2, sought to be normative or even prescriptive, Gove in W3 sought instead to embody competent reportage of the English language as American's speak it. This led to a bit of clumsiness because all the illustrative examples are from written, even published, material. But how else can one obtain historical usage? Unlike the Oxford English Dictionary, which traced each word to its earliest use, W3 used history as a springboard to the present, emphasizing current (as of 1960) American English.

In the later chapters that report on the controversy that erupted in 1961, we find that most of those complaining about it compared W3 to an imaginary W2, not having checked to see that most of their bugaboos were right there in W2 also! Yet W3 is definitely not some slightly-altered clone of W2. It is quite different. W2 was not only prescriptive, it also resembled a one-volume encyclopedia, whereas W3 stuck to defining words, not discoursing at length on the item a word "meant". This was by design, and controversy or no, it has influenced dictionary making ever since. I find that the Collins (also called a Webster's) Unabridged on my desk, published in 1979, owes much to Gove's approach, and defines by reporting.

The way we learn language is by imitation. A dictionary doesn't need to prescribe to influence. We who use them do so to learn what is not just normal or normative, but what is ordinary, because only by using a word in its ordinary sense(s) can we be understood, at least in expository prose. In more creative work, it can be salutary to stretch the meaning of a word, but most of what I write is instructional, and being understood is primary. New words and new meanings arise from children and poets; once they are established, the rest of us can use them for the everyday purpose of communication.

A word few need

kw: lexicography, chemistry

I learned a new word today: thermomorphic.

Used in the expression "thermomorphic catalysts".

By itself the word thermomorphic just means "temperature-mediated change in form". We all know an example, a piece of ice melting. That is the key to the meaning here, except in the other direction, of water freezing to ice.

Why is it applied to catalysts? There are two great classes of catalysts in chemistry, homogeneous catalysts and heterogeneous catalysts. Each has virtues and each has drawbacks. A homogeneous catalyst is in the same phase as the materials being reacted. Usually this means that everything is in liquid form. This has the great virtue that a bit of stirring will accomplish intimate contact between the catalyst and the reactants (reacting materials). The reaction runs at a maximum rate. But it has a significant drawback, that it is hard to get the catalyst out of the reacted product. Usually, the separation is accomplished by distillation or some kind of absorption separation.

Heteregeneous catalysts are in a different phase from the reactants. Usually, the catalyst is a solid and the reactants and product are liquids (at the temperature of reaction). It is easy to separate the catalyst from the product, just by filtration. But the drawback is that intimate contact during the reaction is harder to maintain, and the reaction is slower and perhaps not uniform everywhere.

Enter the thermomorphic catalyst. It is liquid at the reaction temperature, and turns solid when the completed product cools, but before the product itself freezes. So you run the reaction at a high temperature, cool it partway and filter out the catalyst, then cool the product further if needed. I call that neaty-keen.

One shovelful at a time

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, lexicography, memoirs, obsessions

In a dearth of faith, how is one to move a mountain? One shovelful at a time. Depending on the "mountain", I suppose we are fortunate that this or that person might find such shoveling enjoyable: it is a tough job, but someone has to do it.

As to obsessive reading, the "shoveler" I have in mind is Ammon Shea, who has read through the Oxford English Dictionary (the OED), as he writes, "so that you don't have to." The OED has 21,730 pages and nearly sixty million words of print. To read it in a single year, one must read 418 pages each week: nearly sixty pages every seven days or more than eighty pages daily if one takes weekends off…and those are rather large pages!

Shea finished reading through the OED in July, 2007. Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 pages is his memoir of the experience, with a nifty sampling of words that struck his fancy. During that year, his eyes got worse (he had to procure eyeglasses after the first few weeks), his skin got paler (ten hours daily in a library basement), he became composed of coffee (a quart or so daily), and he learned that blinding headaches do eventually go away. And, he writes, he loved the experience.

I sympathize with him about halfway. I do read dictionaries and encyclopedias for enjoyment … from time to time (There is one dictionary that I have read from cover to cover, but it is far smaller than the OED). It seems that at least for the past ten years, Shea has read nearly nothing except dictionaries. His girlfriend is a professional lexicographer. He has a collection of hundreds of dictionaries, and is in awe of an older friend named Madeleine who has thousands.

It is the existence and work of people like Alix, the author's girlfriend, that makes this all possible. The oldest half or better of the OED is the work of James Murray, who famously defined a lexicographer as "a harmless drudge." Thirty-four years of his life, and a much greater sum of years for hundreds of other people, went into producing the massive, twenty-volume work (to find out more, see The OED Online. It is not free to use, but a "word of the day" is offered freely; today's word is downthrow, whose current meaning is overthrow or usurp, except in Geology, where its meaning is more literal. They have, literally, a million more where that came from).

Let's see: iatrogenic, impedimenta, matutinal, painstaker, peccability, recrudescence, sitzfleisch, upchuck, wailer, xerostomia. These ten comprise a few percent of the "interesting" words that Ammon Shea has offered up, with short definitions and his own quirky commentary, to accompany each of his 26 chapters. These ten are all the ones that I already knew.

I cannot say that now I have learned a few hundred new words, for two reasons: Firstly, many of the words denote stuff I don't think of as needing a word. For example, nefandous means "too odious to be spoken of". When "the kid" points and says, "What is that?" we don't reply that it is nefandous, we say, "Hush, it isn't polite to point," or "I'll tell you when you get older," hoping the tyke will forget all about it. Secondly, many, many words are so out of date they haven't been used for generations and some have been replaced. A great many are rather forgettable anyway. Thus, nobody today mentions charientism, since tact is now current, and is loads easier to pronounce.

This points up the greatest attraction and value of the OED, and why it should be taken in larger amounts than just looking up a definition. It is a historical record of hundreds of thousands of words, whether current or not, particularly of how each has been used throughout its history of usage in print. While upchuck is a mere fifty years old, mumpish was used for being sullenly angry for some three hundred years before being replaced by sulky a generation or two ago, and many a word still in use, such as amorous, is little changed from a Latin word of twenty centuries past.

Shea mentions that seven words are defined as hiera picra, with no further explanation. I hope he has since found that this term means "priestly bitters" and refers to a certain type of traditional medicinal dose.

Now that he has finished reading the OED and written this enjoyable book about it, can you guess what he'd like to do next? You got it: to read it again, but more slowly. His web site doesn't mention if he's doing it.