Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Words words words

My 2013 hard cover edition of Webster's dictionary & thesaurus just arrived. Oh my goodness! It contains 67,000 "clear concise dictionary definitions" and more than 140,000 synonyms and antonyms. Talk about words, words, words!
The book is really set up very nicely, with the definitions printed in black and the thesaurus printed in blue. Just for fun I wanted to see how it began and how it ended. It's been a boring day! The first entry was  "a", the first letter of the alphabet and the last one was "zygote", a cell formed by the union of two sexual cells, also, the developing individual produced from such a cell.

I am aware that some of my facebook friends who are writers believe that ordering books from Amazon helps to put local bookstores out of business. Although I do agree with that thought, I live in a small western NM town that does not currently have a book store. I was in need of a new dictionary and had no choice but to order it online. I had donated my old books to an aspiring writer that I am trying to encourage, who resides in a nursing home. I didn't realize I missed the books until I no longer had them.

Although I am thrilled with my new purchase and expect it to inspire me to find synonyms and antonyms I hadn't previously thought of, 67,000 words at my disposal is just a bit overwhelming.

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