Sampling a new dictionary is a perplexing business. How should
its merits be judged? Mainly, I think, by opening it at random. You get that way a fair test of the claims made in the preface or blurb—and also sometimes by chance a home-truth. Applying this method, for example, to a volume Messri. Odhams have just- published at I2S. 6d. I light by a kind of sors Virgiliana Penny-a-Liner: one who writes for a journal for a small sum per line ; a reporter ; a journalist ; particularly one who pads out his material so as to earn more for his work.
Duly chastened, I pursue my investigations further. The volume is described, accurately, as illustrated, though rather as a contem- porary currant-bun 'Bay wear the title of currant-bun. On the page already discussed there are pictures of a peninsula and a pennant, and overleaf of a perch (the piscatorial variety) ; I shall now know the first two if I ever see them. But a dictionary should, be up-to-_ date. Under that test this one comes out well. " Quisling " is there, for instance. So is thorium ; but not plutonium. Nor is humdud- geon, which has beeh harassing me considerably of late. A paper which indulges in anagrams gave this as the solution of one of them, and though several dictionaries were persistently silent on anything between "-humdrum" and " humectate " various irritating friends insisted that they had seen the thing, though as to its meaning they were completely blank. In the end tireless research had its reward.
Scott used it in Guy Mannering. It means an imaginary illness. • * * * *
Previous page
