{"id":6908,"date":"2015-02-26T17:57:18","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T22:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lettersandsodas.com\/books\/?p=6908"},"modified":"2015-02-26T17:57:18","modified_gmt":"2015-02-26T22:57:18","slug":"reading-the-oed-one-man-one-year-21730-pages-by-ammon-sheaperigee-penguin-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/reading-the-oed-one-man-one-year-21730-pages-by-ammon-sheaperigee-penguin-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages by Ammon SheaPerigee (Penguin), 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This was a good book to read while home sick with a cold: fun, funny, and not too mentally taxing. Shea, who says in the introduction to this book that he collects words the way other people collect tangible and\/or valuable things, read the second edition of the <em>Oxford English Dictionary<\/em> in its entirety, and this book is the result. There\u2019s a chapter for each letter, and in each chapter we get some narrative about the project, or about dictionaries generally, or about reading\/words generally, followed by anywhere from three to thirty-two words starting with the chapter\u2019s letter that Shea has pulled from his <em>OED<\/em> reading as being \u201coutrageous, funny, or archaic and deserving of resurrection\u201d (xii). Shea writes about \u201cthe enormous number of words that begin with <em>be-<\/em>\u201d (including <em>bedinner<\/em> and <em>bemissionary<\/em>), and about slogging through 451 pages of words that start with the prefix <em>un-<\/em>. He writes about how different letters feel different: how W, for example, is a section of the dictionary that\u2019s \u201coverwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon in origin,\u201d since the letter W didn\u2019t exist in ancient Latin. He writes about the trials of finding a comfortable\/non-distracting place to read, and about remembering the first book he bought with his own money when he was a kid. <\/p>\n<p>But the words themselves are really the highlight. Some that I particularly like:<br \/>\n\u201cApricity (<em>n.<\/em>) <em>The warmth of the sun in winter.<\/em>\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cImpluvious (<em>adj.<\/em>) <em>\u201dWet with rain.\u201d (Thomas Blount,<\/em> Glossographia, <em>1656<\/em>)\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cJentacular (<em>adj.<\/em>) <em>Of or pertaining to breakfast.<\/em>\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cObdormition (<em>n.<\/em>) <em>The falling asleep of a limb.<\/em>\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cPeristeronic (<em>adj.<\/em>) <em>\u201dSuggestive of pigeons.\u201d<\/em> (OED)\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cWine-knight (<em>n.<\/em>) <em>A person who drinks valiantly.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This was a good book to read while home sick with a cold: fun, funny, and not too mentally taxing. Shea, who says in the introduction to this book that he collects words the way other people collect tangible and\/or valuable things, read the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in its entirety, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonfiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}