Reading the dictionary front to back! It’s something I’ve always wanted to try. This week, somewhat appropriately, we go from glass to gold to greed.

We begin by digesting gizzard, “the muscular usually horny-lined enlargement of the alimentary canal of a bird used for churning and grinding up food.” The movie Jurassic Park never says why the triceratops is sick, but the book has an explanation about how it’s because the dinosaurs have gizzards. Also, “horny-lined?”

Things get weird with glamour. In parenthesis, we get “magic spell,” and “from the popular association of erudition of occult practices.” The dictionary adds “Sc” to this as well, with the chart in the front of the book saying this is short for Scottish. Just so there’s no mistaking this for a Dungeons & Dragons manual, the actual definition is, “an exciting and often illusory and romantic attractiveness.” Did casting a glamour spell in D&D ever actually do anything?

Then we see through glass as “a hard brittle amorphous usually transparent or translucent consisting typically of silica.” It’s also a glass container or eyeglasses, of course.

Somehow Gloomy Gus makes it into the dictionary, as “a person who is habitually gloomy.” And on the next page we get glum, which is “broodingly morose, sullen” and “dreary, gloomy.”

The word go has an astonishing 43 definitions, covering almost half an entire page. Most of these are what you’d expect, with lots of examples for each variation, like “goes barefoot,” or “goes on the top shelf,” but the book also says go can mean “to become lost, consumed, or spent,” and “to die.” Morbid.

Then we’re back in gizzard territory with gobble, “to make the natural guttural noise of a male turkey,” and “to swallow and eat greedily.” Right below is gobbledygook, “generally unintelligible jargon.” That’s what reading a dictionary feels like after a while.

Gold is “a malleable yellow metallic chemical element used especially for coins and jewelry.” Do people still make gold coins? This is followed by golden eagle, “a large dark colored eagle with gold-colored feathers on the back of the head and neck.” And then one I’d never heard of before, golden hamster. It’s “a small tawny hamster often kept as a pet.” Shiny!

Goth and gothic are strictly history, “a member of the Germanic people that early in the Christian era overran the Roman Empire,” and “of or relating to a style of architecture prevalent in western Europe from the middle 12th to the early 16th century.” Nothing about those cool college girls dressed in black you see on the subway. (era)

Graffiti is “unauthorized writing or drawing on a public surface.” But there’s also graffito, “an inscription or drawing made on a public surface.” Where are we drawing the line (heh) between these two?

A grapnel is “a small anchor used especially to recover a sunken object especially to recover a sunken object or to anchor a small boat.” This doesn’t quite describe the grapnel boost from the Batman Arkham games, does it?

Want more? Greed is “acquisitive or selfish desire beyond reason.” Does that nail it, or is that perhaps a bit judgmental?

Next: Hello to H.

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