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| Ox (above), water buffalo (below). But don't take my word. Use your dicker! |
Skimming through someone’s words I noticed: An ox is not a water buffalo.
Ox (more particularly its plural: oxen) goes a long way back with me. I first sang "Once in Royal David's city" in primary school. The carol, popular in the UK, includes the line "… with the oxen standing by..."
This made me think. My English vocabulary, like most other people's, consists of words which
I HAVE NEVER VERIFIED IN A DICTIONARY
Take "frying pan"? There's no need, is there? A frying pan is self-evident. Quite different from "hermeneutics" which I have looked up at least half a dozen times and promptly forgotten.
There are other words I’ve looked up, less well-known than "frying pan" but not exactly obscure. A teacher asked students what “democracy” meant. Most could only come up with "regular elections". But would I have done any better? It turned out there was a lot I'd forgotten. Much worse, there was a lot I'd never known.
But where to start rectifying this? Unverified words form most of my vocabulary, thousands and thousands. Perhaps I should start with "frying pan".
For starters, I checked out ox and water buffalo. Yes there was stuff I hadn't known. But should I have known this stuff?
Ox: a castrated bull used as a draught animal.
Ox: any domesticated bovine animal kept for milk or meat; a cow or bull.
Ox: used in names of wild animals related to or resembling a domesticated ox, eg, musk ox.
Water buffalo: At least 130 million water buffaloes exist, and more people depend on them than on any other domestic animal. They are especially suitable for tilling rice fields, and their milk is richer in fat and protein than that of dairy cattle.
Only about 40,000 more to go.
I do the Quick Crossword in the Guardian nearly every day with my son. Many times I get an answer only when I can see a few of the letters which enables me to guess at a word I know of but have no idea of the meaning, except in relation to the clue at that moment, and I then look it up in the dictionary. There seem to be many such words that I know of but have no idea of their meaning. As you say, retaining the meaning after looking up is a lottery.
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: Let's put this rather more simply. In the course of a lifetime's reading you encounter many words whose meaning is beyond you. You do not haul out the dictionary because it's too much of a fag; sometimes you ignore the word completely and sometimes, based on the context alone, you take a guess. But the word tends to stick in your memory. Where it remains like a set trap which snaps shut in the course of an embarrassing conversation decades later.
DeleteThis is not a personal accusation, many are similarly guilty. At any one time - and for a variety of reasons - our memory is full of words which (fatally) we think we understand. This is not as dangerous as it sounds because most other people's memories are equally stuffed with half-baked definitions. It's only when a smartyboots arrives that we end up with egg on our face.
I'm assuming you don't know what "hermeneutics" is. Look it up in the dictionary and tell yourself you're going to remember it for ever more. Test yourself after a week. If you remember the definition award yourself a hard drink. If you don't, go through this rigmaraole again. See home many times this is necessary before you genuinely know the answer.
This is my kinda post. I admit I do get bogged down in looking up words in the dictionary because I'm interested in shades of meaning and the historical background of the word. Often I don't get around to writing anything at all in the end.
ReplyDeleteZu Schwer: If you look things up in dictionaries then this post is not for you. It's about NOT looking things up in a dictionary.
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