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| An astergent embranglement | | SPEAKING VOLUMES |
| Nilanjana S Roy / New Delhi Sep 30, 2008, 00:05 IST |
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Pity the compilers of Collins Dictionary, labouring under the malison of too many words in the English language. Their call for an exuviation, possibly even a thoroughly astergent cleansing of the dictionary, has led them into an embranglement with word-lovers.
How many words in that paragraph did you recognise? “Malison” means “curse” and shares the same root as “malediction”; to “exuviate” is to shed (usually a skin or similar covering); “astergent” means cleansing or scouring, and an “embranglement” is similar to an entanglement, with the added sense of confusion.
There are some words on the Collins list that I would give up without a thought. Who needs “agrestic” when we already have “rural” and “rustic”? “Astergent” sounds like the name of a new, stringent detergent, but doesn’t actually add much. Could I give up “olid” for foul-smelling? Perhaps, since there’s the wonderful “mephitic”, meaning the “smell of hell” and redolent of the aroma of skunk (the skunk, as Anne Fadiman informed us, is called “mephitis mephitis”). A “periapt”, for charm or amulet, is a trinket of a word, unnecessarily fussy and useful only to the writers of historical novels. And while this is just a personal reservation, “caliginosity”, for dimness or darkness, is too close to “callipygian” (applied to the possessor of an alluring derriere) for my taste.
But there are words that, for anyone who knows and loves the language, shouldn’t be on the list. Like “skirr”, a word that describes the sound of beating wings. Anyone who’s ever watched birds in flight knows that this is the perfect word: you might use it just twice in your lifetime, but you’ll use it with satisfaction. “Fubsy” (fat and squat; plump), which brings back echoes of Georgette Heyer describing one protagonist as “fubsy-faced”, is far too satisfying to be dispensed with—fubsy is a fat and squat sound itself. And while I may never use “muliebrity”—the condition of being a woman—there is a certain satisfaction in knowing that there’s a word to describe my condition. I imagine one would use it in a sentence in this fashion: “Don’t blame my temper, it stems from my muliebrity.”
The larger question that the culling of Collins raises is what the reader should expect from a dictionary. The venerable Oxford English Dictionary works on the principle of expansion rather than deletion: its capacious volumes will alert the reader to a word that is no longer in common use, but will retain the word. Reading the unabridged OED from A to Zyxt, as Ammon Shea did recently, is a voyage down the main tributaries and backwaters of the English language.
Shea devoted a year to reading the 21,730 pages of the OED and wrote about it in the delightful Reading the OED. He admits that the letter Q was “as boring as hell” and he “didn’t much care for X either”, but for the most part, he enjoyed his work—that’s nine to ten hours of reading five days a week. Many of the words that became his favourite are no longer in use, such as “sialoquent”, used to describe someone who spits when s/he speaks, or “bouffage”, an enjoyable or satisfying meal. For Shea, though, as for most word lovers, the point is not that these words are obsolete, or old-fashioned: the pleasure of browsing a dictionary is not just to come across the words you were looking for, but the ones you didn’t even know you needed.
Makers of dictionaries such as the OED see themselves as repositories of the language, perhaps even arbiters of language, but not as language executioners. For the makers of the Collins dictionary, the task is very different: it’s to provide the reader with a utilitarian dictionary, which will pack in as much as it can within a limited span. This is an honourable endeavour, but there’s a reason why the OED sets the standard while dictionaries like the Collins do not.
Can we do without words like “griseous” (streaked with grey) or “niddering” (cowardly)? Of course we can; there are substitutes, and some would argue for the simplicity of saying “streaked with grey” rather than the use of a complex and possibly unnecessary word. But should we do without them? Some words, like some books, are not meant to be used so much as stored on an odd shelf for a rainy day, to be brought out, marvelled at, and set back until the next time.
nilanjanasroy@gmail.com
Disclaimer: The author is chief editor, Westland/ Tranquebar; the views expressed here are personal
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