L: Language

Literally doesn’t just mean “not figuratively,” but it means “of the text.” When you say literally, what you’re actually saying is: “regardless of what is spoken or done, we should refer to what is put down in writing at the source.”

NOMINAL (thingness)

• noun : person, place, thing, idea (‘the dog”)

• pronoun: a signifier of an adjacent noun ( “The dog” > “it”)

• adjective : a modifier of a noun (“the happy dog”)

DYNAMIC (motion)

• verb : an action

• intransitive verb : an action that requires an object (“the dog ate the food”)

• transitive verb : a self-evident action (“the dog sleeps”)

• agnostic : unknowable.

• agoraphobia : fear of unfamiliar situations in public.

• agrarian : agre = acre, of the land.

• Amalthea’s horn : a myth about abundance / having everything you desire. Zeus’s nurse fed goat milk to an infant, snapped off it’s horn, and promised that Zeus will have a pampered life.

• amaranth : a fadeless flower.

• Amaurote : Thomas Moore

WIP words: ag, agglomerate, agglutinate, aghast, agog, agronomy, -aholic, ail, ailron, aria, adjar, akimbo, ambiguity, anagesis, androcentrism, animism, dissemination, egotistical sublime, empiricism, exegesis, explication, foregrounding, formulaic, impressionism, ambry, Osiris, amerindian, amoret, amphisbaena, amrita.

I took three vocabulary tests, marked down the words I missed, and used AI to define them for me. There’s a certain appeal to charting words that are simply “unknown,” but just because its uncommon, doesn’t mean it’s worth using. For now, I think my public dictionary might just include more than necessary: it’s a reflection of my learning process.

Aldous Huxley apparently read 30 volumes of the encyclopedia page by page. That’s a serious ad nauseam commitment to binging reference material in chronological order. (FWIW, all these dictionary facts are coming from Dictionary Days by Ilan Stavans.

Similar to how you start using the slang of your friends without realizing, you should be careful with who you read: you’ll start subconsciously adopting their mannerisms.

A lexigraph of “uproar” (46 entries):

uproar (n.) : an event that disturbs a pre-existing order; ranging from trivial misunderstandings to devastating violence; accompanied by sound. 1520s, German/Dutch: “to stir up.” Middle English, roar: “…a loud, continued sound.” Typically negative, but sometimes turns to humor from de-escalations and clarifica

Neruda’s 2 dictionary poems:

Dictionary, you are not a
tomb, sepulcher, grave,
tumulus, mausoleum,
but guard and keeper,
hidden fire,
groves of rubies,
living eternity
of essence,
depository of language

Dictionary, let one hand
of your thousand hands, one
of your thousand emeralds,
a
single drop
of your virginal springs,
one grain
from your
magnanimous granaries,
fa