Yay, It’s Dictionary Day!

I just learned that today, October 16, is Dictionary Day (thanks to a tweet from dictionary.com). October 16, 1758 is the birthday of Noah Webster,  known as the father of the modern dictionary.

 

 

I love dictionaries, so I got a little bit excited about Dictionary Day and wanted to learn about it. I found an article on pressconnects.com entitled “Oct. 16 is a Day for Word Lovers,” written by Megan Brockett. She writes, “Thursday, Oct. 16, is National Dictionary Day, which celebrates the birthday of Noah Webster, one of the country’s most renowned logophiles, or lovers of words.”

That word. Logophile. Lover of words. Wow, that’s me! I love words; I’ve always loved words. So that’s what people like me (and Noah Webster) are called – logophiles! It’s already fun to learn a new word, but sometimes it’s even more fun when you discover a new way to describe yourself or something dear to you.

DictionaryDictionary Day reminds me of how I’ve always loved dictionaries. Dictionary.com‘s app is one of my favorite apps, and I use it everyday since I write haiku daily using dictionary.com’s Word of the Day.  I also have fond memories of going through our family’s three-volume, leather-bound Webster’s Third New International Dictionary and Seven Language Dictionary when I was in my elementary and high school years. I’d be carefully leafing through its thin pages to look up the definition of a word. I did this for the unfamiliar words I encountered not only in my school lessons and textbooks but also in the story books I read for pleasure.

Just a few months ago, my mother was packing up the many encyclopedia sets and reference books she had kept from our childhood days. I was looking at all of these big, heavy books filling her many-tiered bookshelf and I saw the three-volume, leather-bound dictionaries of my youth. I remembered how I thought to myself that if I were to ask for anything to inherit from my parents, it would be these three books. They would probably serve as mementos than working dictionaries in my home, since my kids and I mostly use online dictionaries nowadays. But, oh, the smell, the feel, the memories of these dictionaries…

Happy Dictionary Day, Logophiles and Lexicographers!

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