I HAD a weird time-warp experience the other day. It was like one of those sci-fi movies where the hero is suddenly swept, in track-bottoms and bare feet, into the court of a medieval king. I typed a word into the computer. My word processing software promptly underlined it in red. Incorrect spelling. I tried juggling consonants and fiddling about with vowels but no matter what combination I typed in, that pesky red line just wouldn’t disappear.
The word, by the way, was "beleaguered". A well-known novelist had used it during an interview, so I couldn't insert a sneaky substitute. On a sudden impulse I went in search of my ancient Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary, which resides in state in the upstairs study along with the family photo albums, large-format gardening books and a couple of signed copies of books by other well-known novelists, now deceased.
I blew the dust off the top of the big red book, opened it at the Bs and began to leaf forward in search of “beleaguered”. And that was when the time-warp thing happened. Having barely turned a page, my eye snagged on the word “bebung”. Hmm, I thought. What’s a bebung? And is it any relation to a be-bop? It isn’t, as it happens. Instead, according to Chambers, it’s “a tremolo effect produced on the clavichord by fluctuating the pressure of the finger on the key”. A technical term of German origin and not one, it must be said, which will ever play a major role in any reasonably sober conversation.
Still, a world with the word “bebung” in it can’t be all bad. I wandered across the columns and came to “Beelzebub”. A form of Baal worshipped by the Philistines at Ekron, runs the explanation. I never
knew that. Or maybe I’d just forgotten. I always thought it was more Hollywood than Holy Bible, but here’s the actual Hebrew derivation: “ba’al z’bub”, translated as
“fly-lord”.
Of course. Wasn’t Baal the inspiration for some of those majestic passages in the Psalms where Yahweh storms across the sky in a chariot of fire, chucking lightning bolts and so forth, which are – so the biblical scholars say – nicked straight out of ancient Canaanite poetry? From Beelzebub, it was but a small step to the ridiculous. “Beer, n. an alcoholic beverage made from fermentation . . .” Beery. Beer-garden. Black beer. Small beer. And then, “beestings” which is not – as you might expect – the result of a concerted attack by enraged insects, but the first milk drawn from a cow after calving. Another technical term from the German, Dutch and Old English. As, indeed, is “beer”.
When I found myself turning avidly to the Ds – wow, look at this one: “ding”, with its past tenses “dinged”, “dang” and “dung” – I had to get all stern with myself, bring the dinged – sorry, danged – book back up to its lonely eyrie, and return to the 21st century. You don’t have time to be leafing through dictionaries any more, I told myself. Why didn’t you use the online dictionary in the first place? It’s probably quicker; certainly it’s much less distracting.
The trouble is, the distraction is the point. That process of wandering down pages – or across pages – in a leisurely fashion, relishing the glory of words as you go, is an experience which has all but vanished from our culture. I can’t help feeling nostalgic about it, even as I feel foolish for feeling that way. And I’m not the only one. Julia Roberts’s comment that “Republican comes in the dictionary
just after reptile and just above repugnant” reveals her to be, not just more politically
savvy than she’s usually given credit for in film reviews,
but a secret dictionary-delver to boot.
I spent a considerable number of hours wandering through the dictionary, in my youth. It didn’t turn me into a Julia Roberts. I don’t know if it ever improved my vocabulary to any great extent. I doubt it. I’d say it was the reading of fiction which did that. But it unquestionably encouraged my love of words; and like all page-turning experiences it cannot be replicated digitally, no matter how ingenious the on-screen graphics. It’s extremely unlikely, therefore, that it’s an experience my grand-daughter- now two, and already an old hand a on iPad, iPhone and Skype – will ever be able to understand.
I know, I know. Sentimental nonsense, made worse by the fact that I'm getting all schmaltzy over Chambers, of all things. It was always the poor relation of the Oxford English Dictionary, and the one the experts were sniffy about. According to Wikipedia it "contains many more dialectal, archaic, unconventional and eccentric words than its rivals, and is noted for its occasional wryly humorous definitions". Examples of the latter include "éclair" – "a cake, long in shape but short in duration" – and "middle-aged"; "between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner".
I wonder if those harmlessly skittish definitions have been included in the Chambers 21st Century Dictionarysmart-phone app, currently available for around a fiver? Maybe they have. Maybe I should invest. It would probably be a less mind-numbing way to waste time, 21st-century style, than playing Blobster or fiddling about with Nanoloop. I should probably consign the big red Chambers to the green bin, as well. But I won't. I'll put it back upstairs. Hang on a second, though. Ah, yes – here it is. "Schmaltz". The Yiddish for cooking fat? Well, what do you know . . .