Ammon Shea > Quotes

“. . .what does the computer know of the comforting weight of a book in one's lap? Or of the excitement that comes from finding a set of books, dusty and tucked away in the back corner of some store? The computer can only reproduce the information in a book, and never the joyful experience of reading it.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“One of the questions I hear most often regarding my plan to read the OED from cover to cover is "Why don't you just read it on the computer?" I usually respond as if the questions was "Why don't you just slump yourself on the couch and watch TV for the year?" which is not quite an appropriate reponse. It is not so much that I am anicomputer; I am resolutely and stubbornly pro-book.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Telephone books are, like dictionaries, already out of date the moment they are printed....”
― Ammon Shea, The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One Reads

“Quomodocunquize (v.) To make money in any way possible. A number of the odd and fantastic words in the OED seem to have been either first used or popularized by Sir Thomas Urquhart. When reading the citation of his that the OED uses to illustrate this word, it is hard for me to understand why we do not commonly use more of his favorite words. Even if you have no real idea what his meaning is, the sentiment is unmistakable and beautifully indelible: “Those quomodocunquizing clusterfists and rapacious varlets.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Charientism (n.) A rhetorical term to describe saying a disagreeable thing in an agreeable way.

If I knew how to say disagreeable things in an agreeable fashion I most likely would not be spending most of my time siting alone in a room, reading the dictionary.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“I find myself subject to the entire range of emotions and reactions that a great book will call forth from its reader. I chuckle, laugh out loud, smile wistfully, cringe, widen my eyes in surprise, and even feel sadness--all from the neatly ordered rows of words and their explanations. All of the human emotions and experiences are right here in this dictionary, just as they would be in any fine work of literature. They just happen to be alphabetized.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Along with tableity (the condition of being a table) and paneity (the state of being bread), cellarhood is a wonderful example of the spectacular ways English has of describing things that no ever thinks it necessary to describe.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Contrary to what many self-help books would have you believe, adding a great number of obscure words to your vocabulary will not help you advance in the world. You will not gain new friends through this kind of endeavor, nor will it help you in the workplace.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Sesquihoral (adj.) Lasting an hour and a half. Because sometimes you just don’t feel like saying “an hour and a half.” Short-thinker”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Tricoteuse (n.) A woman who knits; specifically, a woman who during the French Revolution would attend the guillotinings and knit while the heads were rolling. What I’ve learned from reading the OED has not been confined to vocabulary. I’ve also learned a good deal about the history of the unpleasantness of the human race, including the portrait of this unsympathetic character, the knitter who attends beheadings. Tripudiate”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Preantepenult (adj.) Not the last, not the one before the last, and not the one before the one before the last. The next one. A sterling example of how it often can be far more confusing to use one word than several. It is far easier to say “the third from the last” than preantepenult. Prend”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Reading on a computer screen gives you no sense of time or investment. The page always looks the same, and everything is always in the same exact spot. When reading the book, no matter how large or small it is, a tension builds, concurrent with your progress through its pages. I get a nervous excitement as I see the number of pages that remain to be read draining inexorably from the right to the left.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Minimifidian (n.) A person who has the bare minimum of faith (in something). To the minimifidian the secret to happiness lies in the doctrine of lowered expectations. Which is not the worst way to go through life; it’s hard to be disappointed when you never expect anything. Minionette”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“The OED does include schadenfreude, a word borrowed from German, which means “to take pleasure in the misfortune of another.” But it left out one of my personal favorites, epicharicacy, which means the same thing as schadenfreude, and was in English dictionaries until the early nineteenth century. Misdevout”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“And so, there is something interesting about the word gove. The OED defines it as “to stare stupidly.” So do Funk and Wagnalls, the Century Dictionary, and the Imperial Dictionary. In fact, every dictionary I have checked defines this word as “to stare stupidly” except for Webster’s Third New International, which defines it as “to stare idly.” I am quite sure that the fact that the editor of Webster’s Third was named Gove had nothing to do with this decision. also”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“For the benefit of those half-dozen people who will see a name like Gwillim and put this book down in order to go look it up to see where it comes from — it is the Welsh version of William”
― Ammon Shea, The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One Reads

“Heterophemize (v.) To say something different from what you mean to say. Think back on all the things you’ve said in life that you truly wish you hadn’t. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just claim afterward that you had been heterophemizing, and be instantly forgiven? Homodoxian”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“All of the human emotions and experiences are right there in this dictionary, just as they would be in any fine work of literature. They just happen to be alphabetized.”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“The early dictionaries in English were frequently created by a single author, but they were small works, and not what we think of today as dictionaries. Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall, published in 1604, is generally regarded as the first English dictionary. It was an impressive feat in many respects, but it contained fewer than 2,500 entries, the defining of which would not be a lifetime’s work. This and the other dictionaries of the seventeenth century were mostly attempts to catalog and define “difficult words”; little or no attention was given to the nuts and bolts of the language or to such concerns as etymology and pronunciation. For”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Rejoy has several meanings, the first two of which are somewhat noble, and more than somewhat boring. The third meaning, however, is probably the most applicable one for most people, as so many of us cannot seem to enjoy things unless we possess them. Which explains the existence of shopping malls. Remord”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“In just the first letter of the OED you will find words as magnificent as agathokakological (composed of good and evil), as delicately shaded as addubitation (the suggestion of doubt), and as odd as antithalian (opposed to fun or festivity). I”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Fornale (v.) To spend one’s money before it has been earned. We live in a nation that is overwhelmingly and crushingly in debt, awash in credit card debt and subprime mortgages. How is it possible that the only word for “spending money before it is earned” is an obsolete Scottish one? Forplaint”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Redeless (adj.) Not knowing what to do in an emergency. Redeless has a variety of meanings, but this is the one that speaks to me the most. In yet another case of the rare thing enjoying a common word and vice versa, it is interesting to note that redeless has largely (or entirely) fallen by the linguistic wayside, while savoir faire (which originally meant “knowing what to do in an emergency”) has survived. Redonation”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Parabore (n.) A defense against bores. It would be a very lovely thing indeed if there existed some magical device that you could carry around with you to ward off bores. The closest thing to this I have seen is a contraption Alix gave me a few years back: a little black box on a key chain that will turn off every nearby TV with the push of a button. I carried it with me everywhere and used it whenever I came across that particular form of boredom. Paracme”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Onomatomania (n.) Vexation at having difficulty in finding the right word. Finding a word that so perfectly describes a rather large portion of my everyday existence is one of the things that makes reading the dictionary feel like an intensely personal endeavor. The book is no longer merely a list of words; suddenly it is a catalog of the foibles of the human condition, and it is speaking directly to me. Of course, as soon as I learned this word I promptly forgot what it was, but this just provided me with the frustration of not being able to think of it, and then the satisfaction of once again finding it. also”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Hamartia (n.) The flaw that precipitates the destruction of a tragic hero. Hamartia is a noble word, with a fine history (the OED says also that it refers particularly to Aristotle’s Poetics). If you have any decency or soul, please do not use this word to refer to your own weakness for something such as chocolate. also”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“...Zachary winched a few more letters onto his last name and declared himself king of the Z aficionados.”
― Ammon Shea, The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One Reads

“Grimthorpe (v.) To restore or renovate an ancient building with excessive spending rather than with skill. Grimthorpe is a more or less eponymous word, taken from the title of Sir Edmund Beckett (the first Lord Grimthorpe), a lawyer and horologist in London, who also enjoyed attempting restorations of old buildings. His efforts did not meet with widespread approval, and gave birth to this word. Grinagog”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Heterodogmatize (v.) To have an opinion different from the one generally held. Just because you are in proud possession of opinions that differ from those of the majority of the population is no reason to start patting yourself on the back. Usually it just means you are wrong. also”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

“Foreplead (v.) To ask too much in pleading. You are pleading when you ask for your job back; you are forepleading when you ask for a raise to go with it. Fornale”
― Ammon Shea, Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages