Reading the entire dictionary front to back! Something I’ve always wanted to try. As we get near to wrapping up the letter C, it’s a real cornucopia of words.

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New words! We all know what controversy is, but there’s an accompanying verb, controvert, meaning to deny or contradict. Then there’s contumacious, meaning “stubbornly disobedient” And contumely, which is a noun and not an adjective, meaning “contemptuous treatment” or “insult.” Words with the con- prefix go on for pages, and a lot of them are negative in nature.

A coroner is a “public official who investigates causes of death possibly not due to natural causes.” That makes them sound kind of cool. The second definition is merely “an officer of the crown,” which also sounds a little cool.

A corset is a “stiffened undergarment worn for support to give shape to the waist and hips.” Interesting that it doesn’t specify female or male. Also nice use of the word “stiffened.”

Would you believe a corvette is not a car? It’s “a naval sailing ship smaller than a frigate,” and “an armed escort ship smaller than a destroyer.”

Time to get technical with coulomb, defined as “a unit of electric charge equal to the electricity transferred by a current of one ampere in one second.” I must admit I can’t picture what this is based on that definition. The internet informs me this relates to Coulomb’s law, about the electrical force between two charged objects. The dictionary chose not to add this.

Part of the amusement of reading the dictionary is how antiquated it often is. But here comes our modern times with Covid-19. This one gets a whole dang paragraph, “a mild or severe respiratory illness that is caused by a coronavirus, is transmitted chiefly by contact with infected material (as respiratory droplets), and is characterized especially by fever, cough, and shortness or breath, and may progress to pneumonia and respiratory failure.” What is the dictionary trying to tell us by using the word “respiratory” three times in one sentence?

Of course we have to see what it says about a cow, which is not just a female bovine, but also “the mature female of cattle of an animal (as the moose, elephant, or whale) of which the male is called bull.” We’re all living in one big cow town.

Cro-Magnon is defined as “a hominid of a tall erect race known from skeletal remains found in southern France and usually classify as the same species as present-day humans.” There are going to be some people who don’t like the idea of the human race originating in France.

More animal fun with cuckoo, a “largely greyish brown European bird that lays its eggs in the nests of other birds for them to hatch.” It’s not an adjective meaning crazy, and there’s no cuckoo clocks in the dictionary.

Cute gets an appropriately cute definition, “daintily attractive, pretty.” But the word also means “clever” and “shrewd.” You’ve got to watch out for the cute ones.

Next: D minus.

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