Do you ever wonder how words get into the dictionary?
If you do, you’ll love The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault. I read it ten years ago, but it has stuck in my mind. This inventive story is set in a dictionary publisher’s office where the characters immerse themselves in words to include in the next edition. Their search uncovers clues hidden in the definitions which lead them to an unsolved murder. If you like clever mysteries wrapped in smart and funny prose, this novel is for you.
We most often learn the meanings of words through context. But what if the word has been hijacked, and you’ve learned the wrong definition? My granddaughter used the word ‘random’ to mean strange, weird, or outrageous (I think). Every generation of teenagers invents its own vocabulary, so if you’re writing for or about teens, listen to teenagers and use an online list of current words and definitions.
Over the years, I’ve read the dictionary for fun. As writers, we must always learn and review what we think we know about words. Definitions often change with the times, from culture to culture, and from place to place. If your parents used the wrong definition for a word, you probably do, too.
Once, while critiquing a manuscript from an author in my writers’ group, I stumbled over the phrase ‘Scott-free’. That’s a common phrase, but it bothered me, so I clicked open my dictionary to find ‘scot-free’. I learned something new! A scot is a tax or assessed contribution. It has nothing to do with a guy from Glasgow.
My critique group will catch most second-draft errors, but I keep my dictionary open on my screen when revising. Mistakes would distract readers from the story. I want my work to be polished and ready for publishing, so I question words and phrases I’ve taken for granted.
Jeanne Meeks ~ Fiction Author 