Will I need to be able to spell during the apocalypse?
Will I need a little-used sly synonym to endear myself to others before I shank them for some shoe leather?
I’ve been carting around these two beasts since my high school graduation (I think that’s when I got them?) but haven’t cracked them open in at least 15 years since grad school, though it doesn’t look like I used them much then either…
I love old dictionaries – especially with tiny illustrations – but not my old dictionary, though it does have a few pictures.
But it doesn’t have some everyday words like internet.
(which is weird since it existed then, just among a more select few…)
I don’t care that I’m missing jeggings or glamping (hah! wordpress ain’t got ’em either…) or terms like “hot mess,” but will I miss the actual book?
Will I miss being able to pull it off the shelf on a rainy day, opening it at random…
…and saying, hey, I thought that thing was just called a still?
But then almost immediately forget what I just learned?
Will I lose out on a princely sum not being able to prove a Scrabble play during a power outage?
Will I miss out-dated or somewhat offensive descriptions like:
Runt – 1. an undersized animal, especially the smallest animal of the litter. 2. A person of small stature?
(Definition #2 is listed as derogatory at least in some online dictionaries now…)
Will I miss turning to the runcible spoon and thinking about how it’s like the ancestor of the spork and remembering when we had those crappy sporks in high school that always snapped before the tastiest bit made it to your gob, and all of us cool kids called them sfoons?
Will all of my oversize documents and rugs begin to curl with abandon with nothing left to weight them down?
Will I need a boost to see over the steering wheel when my elderly bones shrink and curve into themselves?
Maybe I just need a pair of lazy tongs to grab things to put in the charity bin to prevent me from opening/touching/examining/experiencing them again…
How about you (especially you writerly few) have you kept your dictionaries?
ASTITCHMATISM 