I stumbled onto a site that has a couple odd-ball dictionaries that can be used on line, and also has titles and authors of a number of unusual dictionaries Check it out, it's very interesting.
http://www.blueray.com/dictionary/
DRAT! I knew there was something I had forgotten to tell you all.
Believe it or not, if thou art a member of Book of the Month Club, you have FREE and apparently unlimited access to the online OED!!!
If you decide you want to join, let me know first so I can arrange to get some free books for getting you into the club.
TEd
Thanks, Dr. Bill, and you led me to an odd coincidence. I couldn't get into Mrs. Byrne's dictionary, but found listed a "Mrs. Byrne's Word a Day" site. The small print of that site credits Kibbutz Ketura in Israel -- where a good friend of mine lives.
If you decide you want to join, let me know first so I can arrange to get some free books for getting you into the club.
Careful TEd - You'll have the commercial usage police after you! Imagine getting anything except mental stimulation out of AWAD!
Tsk, tsk [and how the hell DO you pronounce this?-e]
couple of daysI know my short-term memory's crap, but didn't we have this conversation about two months ago or whenever Dr Bill actually became a PB?
So, the OED - land of the free, or what's the answer?
ask your librarian if they have a licence; you may even be able to log in from your pc.
if any of you actually collect word books, here are some comments on the "Recommended Titles" at this site:
The Word Lover's Dictionary : Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words is seemingly just a paperback reissue of Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary -- which we've mentioned here often (file under 'another stupid marketing ploy').
the Eugene Ehrlich books (Highly Selective...) contain "hard words" culled from the likes of MWC-10 defined in a prescriptive manner - how he thinks they should be used.
The Devil's Dictionary is Ambrose Bierce's hilarious satire of the Human Condition - not really a dictionary at all.
The Dictionary of Highly Unusual Words -- the mostly unusual thing about these words is their structure; letters in alphabetical order and the like.... ideas for some of Anu's theme weeks.
I will add that The Dictionary of the Khazars is actually a novel told in the form of a dictionary of people and documents of interest to Khazar studies. Very puzzling for the first few entries but then you start building up a picture of the story from the clues dropped in the various entries. There are also supposed to be male and female versions of the book differing by only a single sentence. It's fun, but don't buy it as a linguaphilic aid. A typical entry (well not typical because I think it's just about the shortest, the others are far too long to type out):
IBN (ABU) HADERASH -- The devil who divested Princess Ateh* of her sex. He resided in hell, at the place where the orbit of the moon crosses that of the sun. A poet, he wrote the following lines about himself:
When I near their women, Abyssinians
look aghast,
As do Greeks, Turks, and Slavs,
from first to last
The poems of Ibn Haderash were compiled by a man named Al-Mazrubani, who collected the verse of demons and in the 12th century assembled a book of demon poetry (compare the Arabic collection of Abul-Ala Al-Maarri, which records this fact).
Ibn Haderash rode a long-striding horse, and the trot of his hoofs can still be heard, one in each day.
Bingley
Dear Bingley: I found a site with some interesting stuff about the author of "The Dictionary of the Khazars"
http://www.khazars.com/index-e.html
Dr. Bill, I thought some of the choices of what to put in the author's brief bio were interesting: it included his Aztec horoscope, and the statement that he does not belong to any political party.