You’re probably using the wrong dictionary
Two other dictionary projects: The Devil’s Dictionary (1906) by Ambrose Pierce and The Devil’s Financial Dictionary (2016) by Jason Zweig. I’m more interested in the original; all the definitions are satirical and he wrote it over decades. It has around 1,600 words in the unabridged version.
In our striving and our ambition, we are tempted to cast purpose as a motivating force that drives us toward a goal. It’s good to have goals. But pursuing a goal must come from a deeper place. If we only tend to the shallower purposes in life, we live from a place of willfulness.
Drew Moser • The Enneagram of Discernment: The Way of Vocation, Wisdom, and Practice
Emerson, “In Praise of Books”:
“Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no cant in it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of suggestion,—the raw material of possible poems and histories.”
The standard tool to find webs of language are synonyms & antonym, but these are lossy devices. Consider a word like “uproar:” the antonyms are obvious (“harmony”) and if you look up the definitions of the synonyms (“bedlam, tumult, pandemonium”), they all say “uproar.” It’s circular!
In reality, every synonym should have a distinct meaning: be
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