Dictionaries and Their Use

FEW people realize how much entertainment one can get out of a dictionary, if properly used. That rather ponderous volume is seldom given a fair chance, but is treated like a household drudge from year’s end to year’s end, till finally it becomes as uninteresting as a washing-list. All the charm of a dictionary vanishes if it is used as a book of reference: for one thing, because it so often has an awkward way of putting one in the wrong. That is a lesson I learned early in life. As a child I was in the habit of referring to the ‘beheadal of Charles the First,’ that being one of the few dates in English history of which I felt at all sure. One day I happened to mention that melancholy event in the presence of an olderschoolmate, who, justly annoyed by my air of conscious erudition, jumped on me with vigor and dispatch.

‘Beheadal? There’s no such word.’

‘I’ll bet you anything you like there is,’ I cried, making for the nearest dictionary with the comfortable conviction that I was betting on a certainty. Need I own to the well-read reader that I lost my bet?

However, the dictionary, though a bad umpire, can be a delightful companion. Every one knows what it is to have twenty minutes to spare when one feels just in the mood for reading, if only the right thing were at hand. The morning paper has been read; so have the magazines; it does not seem worth while to take up a real book merely to put it down again the moment one is fairly started. To any one placed in this predicament I say: ‘Try the dictionary.’ You will find plenty of good reading, a variety of subject and wealth of vocabulary such as you have never met before, as well as a style which for brevity and exactness is rarely equaled; you can begin anywhere and end at any time. To the over-conscientious I would give a word of advice, — do not be afraid of skipping.

Lately I have been far afield in a small Japanese-English dictionary, from which I have culled a choice collection of words peculiar to the country, such as: —

An: A small house inhabited by a Buddhist priest.

Araigome: Washed rice offered to idols.

Onden : Rice fields about which a false statement has been made in order to diminish the tax.

Now, idols are all very well, for even in this country we have idols (of sorts) to whom we devote more precious gifts than much-washed rice. Also, no idol nourished merely on rice will be able long to withstand the assaults of the higher criticism. But it is rather melancholy to find that tax-dodging is not unknown to that most patriotic though by no means lightly taxed nation.

On the strength of this chunky little volume I have formed an affection for the baku, ‘an animal said to swallow bad dreams and make them good.’ Some enterprising importer would find a ready sale for so benevolent a beast. A baku should certainly be attached to every well-regulated household. Not by children alone would he be received with open arms. In many of the loftier walks of life he would find countless other equally stanch and devoted friends. What prime minister, no matter to which party he belonged, could refuse a certainty of being delivered from the Irish Question, at least during his sleeping hours? What speculator would not hail with joy a release from bearish onslaughts or the fierce attacks of savage bulls, once his head was on the pillow? Thus, wherever the baku went, the gentle creature would grow fat and sleek from much plying of his friendly trade.

As one would suppose, in a Japanese dictionary the words describing various aspects of nature are very numerous, as for instance:—

Ari-ake: A morning in which the moon is seen.

Yukan: The quiet, tranquil appearance of a distant landscape.

Asayake: The glorious appearance of the sky at sunrise.

Asakage: The long shadows caused by the morning sun.

Yukimi: A party or excursion for looking at the falling snow.

One could quote indefinitely, but this is enough to prove the poetic possibilities of what is supposed to be a prosaic volume.

A dictionary of the Russian language should throw some light on the present state of affairs in that country, and show how it happens that with a government quite incapable of governing, the Revolutionary party is nevertheless powerless to put through the revolution they have been dangling for so many weary and bloody months before the eyes of the world. But what can one expect of a people who, besides the curse of a corrupt bureaucracy, have the double burden of the Russian language to handicap their efforts? Take the alphabet alone: its principal object, apparently, is to distract and madden the most long-suffering race in Europe. It pursues this object with a malignant perversity, a diabolical ingenuity, that is positively startling in these days of half measures and milk-and-water convictions. It is all very well to say that the Russians are used to it; so they may be; but this very use has left an indelible imprint on the national character. Eels get used to being skinned, but the skinless state can never be conducive to a bold and active life. How can any one take a word like gara and pronounce it ‘ datcha ' without doing violence to his finer feelings? While to go through life pronouncing crem, ‘schott,’ cannot fail to have a most deplorable effect on a man’s mind by destroying all belief in the connection between cause and effect.

No, the Russian dictionary is too annoyingly perverse to afford much pleasant reading. It may be instructive, to those unhappy wretches who are struggling with the language, though even in their case one may be permitted to have serious doubts. Certainly, unless one has already a good knowledge of the language, one should never turn to a dictionary for information save in cases of dire necessity, for any dictionary, when degraded from its proper sphere to fill the position of maid-ofall-work, knows how to take a fitting revenge on those who thus misuse it.

Every traveler has his collection of side-splitting assaults on the English language wrought by the luckless foreigner through the perfidy of the dictionary. My latest treasure-trove of this sort is a small twenty-page pamphlet, called Nouvelle Méthode pour Apprendre VAnglais. And soit is,quite new, — startlingly so in places. At the ‘SilkMercer’s,’ for instance, the obliging salesman, trying to make things easy for the traveling Englishwoman, remarks while displaying his wares, ‘Here is some blue the of green a shethis rosa very pretty.’ This is sheer gibberish, though in comparing it with the French one cannot but admire the ingenuity which turned celle-ci into ‘she-this.’ But the author gives himself and his methods away completely when, mistaking a noun for a feminine adjective, he boldly puts ‘a discovery cab’ as the English equivalent for une voiture découverte, and translates mais je vais conserver vos bagages en garantie, jusqu’à ce que vous me régliez by this never-to-be-forgotten sentence: ‘maize I am going to conserve your luggage in guarantie till you me rule.’

Doubtless we have all made many such mistakes, of which we are likely to remain blissfully ignorant to the end of our days, luckily for our self-esteem. But as few Americans have the epic courage, the heroic temerity, to follow in the footsteps of our anonymous Frenchman, the moral of this brief exhortation is not, ‘Do not write a French phrase-book unless you have some slight knowledge of the language.’ No, it is merely a hint as to the whereabouts of a rich treasure-house and the proper manner of using its contents. If put to base and utilitarian uses, these will prove a very pitfall for the unwary. Or, to change the metaphor, the dictionary is a rich meadow sprinkled with rare and beautiful flowers which should be sought out one by one and prized for their own sake, not cut down with a mowing-machine and made into bales of useful, but oh, how uninteresting, hay!