Ode on a Grecian URL
Saturday, September 10, 2005
I didn't know what "parterre" meant either
The first hebdomadal assignment is still very much listed down below.
Observe the lovely, trim search field over on the sidebar there. It accesses the University's online subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary, the premiere dictionary of our language. In physical form, the twenty-volume OED costs around $850 and weighs just over 150 pounds; we academics of the information age should seriously appreciate the online version.
Play around with searching the OED for a few minutes; get comfortable with its interface and the glorious depth of its definitions. Use the Etymology button to see where our words come from; play with the alphabetical list of entries on the left-hand side of the screen to visit words' neighbors. If you don't have a serious, thick dictionary to keep beside you as you read, and if you have a computer in your room, you should get used to using the OED to look up the words you aren't familiar with.
And even if your SAT studying taught you obscure terms like parterre, practicing looking up particularly crucial terms to discover the nuances of their multiple meanings, to check out their etymologies, and to see whether its meaning has changed since the Nineteenth Century.
For example, did you notice affections in line 42 of "Tintern Abbey"? Here's its context: "that serene and brightened mood, / In which the affections gently lead us on" (ll 41f). What could "affections" mean in that context? Check out the OED definition, and scroll down to meaning IV.
You should be reading Wordsworth and Eliot with a dictionary open beside you, or at least available via wifi on your laptop.
...and if you have a birthday coming up, consider asking for the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition, or - if you don't want 7.9 pounds of lingual history sitting on your lap - consider the 3.8-pound American Heritage College Dictionary.
Observe the lovely, trim search field over on the sidebar there. It accesses the University's online subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary, the premiere dictionary of our language. In physical form, the twenty-volume OED costs around $850 and weighs just over 150 pounds; we academics of the information age should seriously appreciate the online version.
Play around with searching the OED for a few minutes; get comfortable with its interface and the glorious depth of its definitions. Use the Etymology button to see where our words come from; play with the alphabetical list of entries on the left-hand side of the screen to visit words' neighbors. If you don't have a serious, thick dictionary to keep beside you as you read, and if you have a computer in your room, you should get used to using the OED to look up the words you aren't familiar with.
And even if your SAT studying taught you obscure terms like parterre, practicing looking up particularly crucial terms to discover the nuances of their multiple meanings, to check out their etymologies, and to see whether its meaning has changed since the Nineteenth Century.
For example, did you notice affections in line 42 of "Tintern Abbey"? Here's its context: "that serene and brightened mood, / In which the affections gently lead us on" (ll 41f). What could "affections" mean in that context? Check out the OED definition, and scroll down to meaning IV.
You should be reading Wordsworth and Eliot with a dictionary open beside you, or at least available via wifi on your laptop.
...and if you have a birthday coming up, consider asking for the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition, or - if you don't want 7.9 pounds of lingual history sitting on your lap - consider the 3.8-pound American Heritage College Dictionary.
:: posted by Mike, 9:29 PM