Reading the dictionary front to back! This week we get into mythology, astrology, and – if you can believe it – the nature of art itself.

An Allen wrench gets a simple but effective definition, but then the dictionary insists they only come from the Allen Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Conn. The wrench industry must have some powerful lawyers.

Amazon is neither a website nor a river. Instead, it’s the more classical definition of “a member of a race of female warriors from Greek mythology,” and “a tall, strong, often masculine woman.”

In another case of “how do you define the undefinable?” ambiguous is “capable of being understood in more than one way.” I’m impressed by how that doesn’t seem ambiguous at all.

Amity gets a one-word definition of “friendship.” I guess its use in the Jaws and Amityville Horror franchises is meant to be ironic. On second thought, the three guys from Jaws do become friends after a bit, don’t they?  

Ammonia has the scientific definition of the chemical, but also goes on about how it’s named after the “salt of Ammon,” extracted from the temples of the Egyptian god Ammon. Somebody on the dictionary staff must be a huge mythology nerd.

Amusement Park is “a commercially operated park with devices for amusement (such as roller coasters) and booths selling refreshments.” You could argue that it’s a lot more than that, but the dictionary writers have to keep this short. Also, you’d think a roller coaster would be a lot more than a “device,” but maybe that’s just me.

Keeping the mythology theme going, ancient is described as relating only to ancient Greece or Rome specifically. I’m sure plenty of other parts of the world also has ancient stuff. I mean, they just mentioned Egypt a few pages earlier.

Angel has multiple definitions. These include a spiritual being, and, separately, a human with wings. It also means “a financial backer,” which says a lot about the world we live in.

Then we get into a dark place with angry as “showing anger,” angst as “a feeling of anxiety” and anguish as “extreme pain or distress.” What does it say about the English language that these three words are right next to each other?

A couple of weird ones with the verb animadvert as “to express criticism” or “to censure.” This is followed by animalcule, “a tiny animal invisible to the naked eye.” Therefore, if you make a YouTube video ranking all the tiny animals, you can call it “Animadverting animalcules.”

An ankh gets a description of the symbol, also adding that it dates back to “ancient Egypt.” Hey dictionary, you just said “ancient” only refers to Greece and Rome, but now… oh, forget it.

When get to a long runner of words that begin with the prefix “anti,” the dictionary adds a list of just words along the bottom of the page, like footnotes. I guess the idea is that they didn’t have room for definitions of these, but here they are if you need to know how to spell them.

An “antitoxin to venom” is somehow not antivenom, which has no entry. Instead, the proper word is antivenin. Not quite as catchy.

We get into astrology stuff in this section with both Aquarius and Aries, but they are described not as zodiac symbols but as “zodiacal,” which is another new one. There’s definitions of the symbols and the time of year they relate to, but not any deeper meaning. It’s up to you to get spacy on your own.

Another seemingly undefinable word is art. Beyond being a skill and a division of the humanities, art is “the use of skill and imagination in the production of things of beauty.” Associating art only with beauty strikes me as awfully narrowminded. What about slice-of-life art, or minimalist art, or horror movies even? We’ll have to revisit this when we get to the dictionary’s take on beauty.

Next: England, or Gotham City?

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