Reading the entire dictionary front to back! It’s something I’ve always wanted to try. The letter L leads us on quite a journey.
Get this: We’re now halfway through the dictionary! Also, I now know why this particular dictionary was only $10. It’s falling apart. The spine is all creased and cracking, and pages are this close to falling out. It the book can’t survive me doing this blog, how could it handle a whole school year in some English class somewhere?
Speaking of which, a library is “a place in which books and related materials are kept for use but not for sale.” Not a building, mind you, but a place. I guess that explains all those little free libraries you see everywhere.
Remember when The Love Boat always used to reference “the lido deck?” No? Well anyway, lido is “a fashionable beach resort.” A tacky resort is totally not lido.
Honestly, a lie detector is “a polygraph for detecting physiological evidence of the tension that accompanies lying.” Looks like the dictionary writers chose their words very carefully for this one.
Once again we have to ask, how do you define the undefinable? Life is “the quality that distinguishes a vital and functioning being from a dead body and inanimate matter, also a state of an organism characterized especially by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction.” I don’t see consciousness as part of that description. I guess that’s so it can also include plants as well?
There’s life when we let there be light, right? Light is “something that makes vision possible,” “electromagnetic radiation visible to the human eye,” and “the sensation aroused by stimulation of the visual sense organs.” Does that third one seem a little suggestive to anyone else? There are other definitions which cover lightweight, humorous, to fall slowly, and “with little baggage.”
The dictionary loves animals, this time with limpet. “any of numerous gastropod sea mollusks with a conical shell that clings to rocks or timbers.” That Incredible Mr. Limpet movie would seem to be way off.
Let us imbibe. Liqueur is “a distilled alcoholic liquor flavored with aromatic substances and usually sweetened,” while liquor is merely “a distilled alcoholic beverage.” Any bartenders reading this care to chime in?
Here’s a new one: livermorium is “a short-lived artificially produced radioactive chemical element.” Wikipedia has more, claiming that the substance is “extremely radioactive,” and because it’s very expensive to produce and decays quickly, its exact properties remain unknown. Never mind that it sounds like a made-up thing from Futurama.
A lodge is “a house set apart for residence in a special season or by an employee of an estate,” the meeting place or branch of a fraternal organization,” and “a den or lair of especially gregarious animals.” What does or doesn’t make an animal gregarious?
Lonely is just “being without company.” Such a trite, nondescriptive definition makes me feel… a little lonely.
Next: The mighty M.
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