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Sunday, January 3, 2016

Simple Suggestion For The Mitigation Of Ignorance And The Advancement Of Learning

Alan: Every home should have at least one good dictionary, preferably with brief integrated etymologies. 

Webster's New Collegiate Edition - whose previous incarnations date back to 1916 - is highly recommended. 

This edition, with "thumb tabs," is easy to find in used book stores... a lamentably vanishing species.

The bathroom is an excellent storage location since it insures ready reference.

Use the dictionary every time you come upon a word whose meaning you don't know; whose meaning is vague; or whose etymological roots "beg" investigation. 

"Sinister" and "supercilious" are good examples of the latter.

If you think this is a silly suggestion, read:

Mark Twain, Adolf Hitler And The Dunning-Kruger Effect

When I was a boy, Dad would play a thought game based on the question "What five --- books, records, foods etc... --- would you take with you to a desert island where you've been banished for the rest of your life?" 

Although Dad included the Bible, he made a special point of emphasizing Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, a leather-bound, rice-paper edition of which was the first optional purchase made by my "newly-wed" parents after their post-Depression economic situation stabilized. 



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