January 7, 2018 -         Word of the Day

         Every once in a while, I really sit back and appreciate what the internet can do for you personally, in your job, or just about in everything.  Yesterday I was looking up a word to make certain that I was using the right word, something I do often, and I ended up at the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary site.  The only reason I no longer hesitate to use an on-line dictionary is that I have dual screens.  [I never liked reducing a screen to get to another one – just not my style.]  Those processes just didn’t feel seamless to me.  Often I would prefer to just grab my nice dictionary and flip through the onionskin pages for the exploratory experience.

         Years ago, when I was a teenager, I remember my Mom saying to my brother, who was writing a paper for class work, when he asked how to spell something,

         “Look it up. The dictionary is your best friend.” Mom called from the kitchen as she was making dinner.

         “If I don’t know how to spell it, how can I look it up?”  He cried with impatience.

         Sitting in the living room, doing my own homework, I felt his pain in the situation and agreed with him. [This was back in the 1970s way before word processing. All writing was the old-fashioned way – either by hand or on a typewriter.  Since we didn’t own a typewriter, our school papers were written  by hand.]

Years later when I was well into my career I found a quaint little book called “Misspelled” which if I remember correctly had a cartoon of a worm on the front of it, and I snapped it up, just in case I was stymied at spelling.  I re-read that book occasionally to improve my spelling, and it is tucked in my library of books somewhere.  Too bad, we didn’t have that little book when we were in school.  It would have made our lives easier.

         These days, with the WORD program as one of the major data input frame works, one gets a squiggly red line under a word when it doesn’t come up in the standard dictionary.  I feel it causes laziness, but on the other hand, it does allow the creative juices to work unencumbered, which is an excellent tradeoff. 

My first dozen or so letters to my Mom when I moved away from home, were returned to me marked up with a red pen covering both grammar and spelling.  She’d circle misspelled words and write “spelling” in the margin.  It didn’t take me long to realize good spelling and grammar along with good manners were expected of me.  When I wrote letters too her and I didn’t have my dictionary handy, I would circle the word and put a Sp.?  near it so that Mom knew I didn’t have my “favorite friend” dictionary handy.  I received fewer letters returned with red ink.

Later when I moved to this county, my neighbor’s little girl doing homework asked,

“How do you spell . . .”

“Look it up in the dictionary.  The dictionary is your best friend.” I said immediately.  In that instant I realized I may have overstepped my boundary.  Her Mom’s smile assured me I hadn’t.

“Here is the dictionary, look it up,” her Mom said.

“I can’t if I don’t know how to spell it . . . .” the little girl started to whine.

“Sure you can, you look for it like it sounds and if you can’t find it, we will help you.”  I chimed in.

After some effort the child looked up and paused not sure what to say because she couldn’t find it.

Her Mom said,

“How did you think it is spelled?”

After a little coaching of the different ways the beginning of that sound could be found in the dictionary, the little girl found the word.  The Mom coached her again,

“Read the definition out loud to us,” Mom called.

Countless times, I would be visiting this Mom and her little girl and she would ask how to spell a word and I would reply,

“The dictionary is your best friend,” with the complete approval of her Mom.

Years later the little girl, now a young woman, was introducing me to one of her friends and mentioned to her,

“This is my neighbor. She told me ‘The dictionary is my best friend’. 

I thought it was a lovely way to be introduced even if they did smirk at each other and giggle.

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Where am I going with this blog today?  Yesterday I signed up for the Word of the Day to be sent to my email address from the Merriam-Webster’s website.  It is fun.  Not only do they send you a word of the day, but you can hear it correctly pronounced when you press the speaker icon.  That is the best part, you learn how to correctly pronounce it. 

Additionally, they have spelling tests that are fun too – if you like a personal challenge. Sure, it can be a great time waster if you need one, but you are learning something at the same time, so – is that really a waste of time?

The dictionary is still my best friend.