About twenty-five or so years ago my mom gave me a marvelous birthday gift: The Random House Compact Dictionary Unabridged Special Second Edition. Its pages are whisper thin, squeezing in a whopping 315,000+ entries into 2,214 pages. This does not include the 26-page introduction, which provides the book’s history; word etymology; and the Random House editorial decisions on myriads of lexiconic mechanics regarding punctuation, pronunciation, tenses, parts of speech, and spelling variations that can—for example—turn a singular noun into a plural (i.e. “city” versus “cities”). The book is topped off by 16-page addendum of grammar rules, editorial marks, style guides, and a comprehensive list of oft-confused words (i.e. “affect: to influence” versus “effect: to accomplish; result.” As an aside, a handy way to remember the difference is this axiom “The affect resulted in an effect.”).
Simply put: The Random House Compact Dictionary Unabridged Special Second Edition lives up to the name, compacting its Homeric content with unequivocable panache.
From the day I was born, Mom shared with me her love for books. Here’s one of my earliest and most treasured memories: A bright sunny day. I am four years old and have an armload of books in my hands. Mom has checked them out of the public library for us to read together. When we are done, she tells me, we will return these books to the library—and then we can take out more.
Books and then more books? And as many as we want? For free? At four years old, I felt like the power of the universe was magically bestowed unto me. That moment grew into a life full of books, including—eventually—my own. I think that was Mom’s ultimate wish fulfilled. I was her son, the author. So I guess it was no surprise that Mom gave me this dictionary but still, it was a wonderful surprise. I promised her I would get a bookstand worthy of holding this gorgeous behemoth.
Instead, that intention became one of those “I need to do this someday” things. When Mom died on June 1, 2017, I hadn't fulfilled my promise of getting that special stand. The dictionary sat on a bookshelf, unused but something I couldn't avoid. It was just so honking big.
All that changed a few months ago. I needed access to an electrical outlet that was hidden by the dictionary. Okay, I said, time to do what I promised Mom. I had to get her gift a deserving bookstand.
What I found was a work of true beauty, a Drexel Heritage mahogany desktop bookstand which I got for a song on Facebook Marketplace. The stand and the dictionary were a perfect fit for one another. I placed them on the editing table in my basement office—or as I refer to the digs: “Arnie’s Too Much Coffee Emporium & Typing Clubhouse.”
And there it sat. For a few months. This wasn’t right. Mom loved to learn. Even on her deathbed, she wanted to go out with something new. One of the hospice nurses was from Tonga. Mom asked about the country, so the nurse showed a few YouTube videos. To her dying day, Mom was learning. The smile on her face as she experienced Tonga from afar was beautiful.
I owed Mom. From that triumphant day at the library through all those years since, Mom’s gift to me was her love for words. She didn't give me this book to just take up space and look pretty. At 315,000+ words, The Random House Compact Dictionary Unabridged Special Second Edition demanded attention. I set a goal. Learn five new words every day. I took a Mead Notebook (God love ‘em!), paged through the dictionary, and used my eternally wretched penmanship to write down my quintent, day in day out.
I've been at this for a few months. I don't have any specific rules to the morning exercise. Some days I flip randomly through the pages, drop a finger, and find my word of the day. If I already know the word, I tend to skip it. But if there's something nearby that I don't know, well, there's my bounty.
Sometimes within an entry there will be another word I don’t know. I’m not scientifically inclined. To me science means “fly the kites Igor, the storm is at its height!” Hence, purpurin (page 1570) doesn't register with me. Remember that teacherly advice we alway got in school? “Mrs. Carlino, what does ‘purpurin’ mean? What does ‘anthraquinone’ mean?” You know what she would say. “Look it up.” Thus I went down many a playful word rabbit hole. In the case of “purpurin” and “anthraquinone” here are the answers:
The reddish crystalline known as purpurin is an anthraquinone dye. Okay, but what is anthraquinone (page 88)? Answer: a yellow water insoluble crystalline powder usually derived from anthracene or phtulic anhydride, used in the manufacture of anthraquinone dye.
And what is anthraquinone dye? Funny you should ask. An anthraquinone dye is any class of dyes derived from anthraquinone used for dyeing textiles, especially cotton, rayon, and silk.
And on it went.
Some definitions were amusing in their piquancy. Take "hippiedom." (page 905). I'll bet you never knew that its dictionary definition is "lifestyle and world of hippies, especially in the 1960s.” Groovy, man
Some words, which seem simple on the surface, are daunting exercises in verbal imagination. Through the eons, humans have created languages filled with words that have multiple meanings but who knew that a two-letter word like "up" could spin off into ninety-three different directions?
Prefixes can have a similar vein, such as the wide impact of “un-”. Rather than provide every single definition, the dictionary lists the many “un-” variants begining on page 2053 and ending on page 2091.
That’s thirty-eight pages total.
Several of the zoological entries are accompanied by illustrated examples. There are enough animal definitions to fill Noah's ark several times over. Consider the peccary (page 1427). I thought I knew the definition of a peccary from the opening track on Frank Zappa’s album Studio Tan: “The Adventures of Greggery Peccary.” Zappa delighted in eccentric wordplay, talents that are on full mondo wicked display in this satirical parody. To wit: Greggery Peccary is a “nocturnal gregarious wild swine” who works for Big Swifty and Associates, Trend Mongers. When not dazzling the girls in the steno pool, Greggery is hard at work developing new trends. He hits the motherlode with his creation of “the calendar.” Time can now be tracked. Chaos ensues.
Zappa describes a peccary as “…a little pig with a white collar that usually hangs around between Texas and Paraguay, sometimes ranging as far west as Catalina.” It’s a zesty riff on the dictionary definition.
Apropos of nothing, peccary is sandwiched between two other definitions, peccant and peccatophobia, neither of which has anything to do with noctrunal gregarious wild swines. Rather, these words offer a quasi-biblical twist:
Speaking of sin, looking through a desk-bound dictionary offers a path back to a favorite childhood memory. If you’re of a certain pre-internet age, you know what I’m talking about. You probably did the same thing when you were about ten or twelve. Kids today! They can fire up the Google to find any word they want. My generation? We had to work a little harder. But the hunt was always worth the reward.
Yup. You did it. I did it. We looked up swears. On that front, the noble editors of The Random House Compact Dictionary Unabridged Special Second Edition delivered the goods. On the off chance that Substack won 't allow certain words to be committed on their platform for digital distribution, here is a visual cataloging of just a small portion of gleeful nostalgia.
This being the Typewriters Collage, I was thrilled to see QWERTY on page 1588.
One week I decided to look up the last word of each letter for my daily definitions. The third letter of the alphabet offered a wonderful surprise.
I’m a descendent of immigrants from Częstochowa. It’s where my mom’s grandparents lived before coming to America in 1912. My daily definitions brought me back to my mom.
You may have noticed that I haven't put a picture of my mom in this piece. There's a reason for that. Mom was an intensely private person. On many an occasion and in no uncertain terms, she made it clear to me that was I never to put her picture on the internet Ever. And when she said “never” she meant “ever.” With a strong emphasis on that “never” and “ever.”
I honor that wish, but I also I honor her other wish: that I have a lifelong relationship with the written word. It's been an extraordinary adventure, from that moment of triumph as a wide-eyed four-year-old to this morning’s five new words. That is my mom’s everlasting legacy. With a strong emphasis on the “ever” in the “everlasting.”
Thanks for reading The Typewriter's Collage. Connect with me at Twitter/X, Bluesky, Threads, and Instagram at the handle @RealArnieB. I’m on LinkedIn and Facebook under my real name. While you’re at it, be sure to take a peek at my website, www.arniebernstein.com.
Interesting Links:
A brief history of The Random House Compact Dictionary Unabridged Special Second Edition.
You can check out a copy of the dictionary itself on an hourly basis on The Internet Archive.
Frank Zappa’s Studio Tan, featuring “The Adventures of Greggery Peccary.”
And since you made it this far, here’s one last entry from The Random House Compact Dictionary Unabridged Special Second Edition.
This is lovely, Arnie. I feel that way about my beloved Roget's Thesaurus, which I asked for as a 17th birthday gift... I must have been a weird kid too. Your mother would have understood (she sounds great).
Hold on to your dictionaries. With the online penchant for altering or deleting info, can definitions be far behind? : (