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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.
A thesaurus is a word treasury.
An unformatted soup of custom definitions: ab initio; to start over from the beginning abysmal : not just extremely bad, something that irreversibly sucks you in to a point of no return; like an abyss; something with a fathomless or immense interior from which you can’t escape upon entering. arboreal: a habitation built under trees or canopies ark
... See moreDictionary dump (unformatted): a/an : “A was modified from the Egyptian hieroglyph representing the eagle. In Hebrew it was an ox, and in Greek it was a “symbol of a bad AUGURY in the sacrifices.” The distinction between a/an happened around the 1300s. aardvark : South African “earth pig” aaron’s serpent : “something so powerful as to swallow up mi
... See moreWIP (AI) definitions:
Alabaster: A fine-grained, translucent form of gypsum, typically white, often used for carving and decorative objects.
Alacrity: Brisk and cheerful readiness; eagerness.
Albatross: A large seabird known for its ability to fly long distances. In literature and symbolism, it represents a burden or curse, often related to guilt or p
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
... See moreDictionary, 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
Yet the weird truth is that for all their artifactual splendor, dictionaries are starkly misleading portraits of something as endlessly transforming as language. In terms of how words actually exist in time and space, to think of a word’s “genuine” meaning as the one you find upon looking it up is like designating a middle-aged person’s high school
... See moreJohn McWhorter • Words on the Move: Why English Won't - and Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally)
cosmos : not just a synonym for universe, but a beautiful universe (cosmetic)
sophistry : rhetorical masters without a compass, from ancient Greece, hucksters and mercenaries; using the dark arts of craft to deceive populations.
philosophy : the communal pursuit of wisdom (philo = friends, sophia = wisdom).
prescient : foresight into the future thr