Reading the entire dictionary front to back! Something I’ve always wanted to try. Let’s all have a Coke while we read comics on our computers.

Code has multiple definitions, mostly related to systems and symbols, but it also has to do with a document formed of wooden tablets from the trunk of a tree. Is somebody out there collecting these things?

The dictionary loves animals! A coelenterate is “any of a phylum of radially symmetrical invertebrate animals including the corals, sea anemones, and jellyfishes.”

A coin is obviously a piece of metal used as money, but did you the image on a coin is also named… the coin? I wonder if this gets confusing down at the mint.

Coke is not a soft drink, but “a hard grey porous fuel made by heating soft coal to drive off most of its volatile material.” For the soda, you’ve got to go down on that same page for cola, “a carbonated soft drink usually containing sugar, caffeine, caramel, and special flavoring.”  

Combat has an unusually short definition, either “to fight” or “to struggle against.” Odd that it’s only a verb and not a noun.

Once again the dictionary raises the question of how to define the undefinable. In this case it’s comedy, which gets a very old-timey definition. It’s “a narrative that ends happily,” “a play with a happy ending,” “a light amusing play with a happy ending” (these two definitions couldn’t be combined into one?), “a literary work having a comic theme or comic style,” or “a humorous entertainment.” It’s not until we scroll down to comic for a more telling definition of “provoking laughter or amusement.”

Somebody get Scott McCloud on the line, because it’s time to define comic book. It’s “a magazine containing sequences of comic strips,” which doesn’t strike me as wholly accurate. But then a comic strip is “a group of cartoons in narrative sequence.” Now that strikes me as appropriately McCloud-ish.

Commonweal is short for “commonwealth.” How much time are you saving by dropping the “th” at the end?

To complain is to “express grief, pain, or discontent,” or to “make a formal accusation.” Which of these best describes everyone online complaining about Star Wars?

The dictionary keeps things simple with computer, “a programmable electronic device that can store, retrieve, and process data.” How many years has the dictionary been using this one over and over?

Consanguinity is merely a “blood relationship” with no other details. That’s one for the vampires, I guess.

A constellation is “any of 88 groups of stars forming patterns.” I had no idea there’s only 88 of them. Isn’t space supposed to be endless?

Next: Cow town.

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