Glossary

One of the most important books in a reader’s library is the dictionary. Here are a few words I’ve had to look up in my reading or that I thought were noteworthy.

Amended March 7, 2011

A

Acheron – a river from Greek mythology over which the dead were ferried by Charon

adamantine – hard, unyielding (the last syllable may be pronounced like teen, tin or tine, which could come in handy for rhyming)

aerolith, n. – a meteor (such as on might see in the empyrean)

aliquot – an adjective that describes something that is an exact divisor, or factor
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, OneLook

For example, when you factor a number, such as 60, you find its aliquot parts, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30.

angstrom, n. – unit of length equal to one ten-millionth of a millimeter (10-7 mm), mainly used to express electromagnetic wavelengths (named for Swedish astronomer Andes Johann Ångström)
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, OneLook

aprioristic, adj. – preconceived, or considered valid independent of observation or evidence

“The grid for historical interpretation is more than something that facilitates the selection and interpretation of evidence: it offers an all-encompassing aprioristic view of reality into which the phenomena of history must be made to fit, whether by fair means or foul.”

-Carl R. Trueman, Histories and Fallacies

Argus – a giant with 100 eyes from Greek mythology

C

cagoule – a hooded, weatherproof jacket
Cambridge Dictionary, TheFreeDictionary

canescent – downy, as in the whitish or grayish down on some plants
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

caul – part of the amnion sometimes covering the head of a child at birth
Dictionary.com, OneLook

celebutante – a young woman who is famous for no discernable reason (from celebrity + debutante)

cicerone – a guide for sightseers (pronounced with a long e at the end)

cloaca – a sewer
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

concertina – noun musical instrument resembling an accordion with hexagonal bellow and button-keys – verb to fold or collapse like a concertina
Dictionary.com, OneLook

crepuscular – resembling or active at twilight
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

cuprous – containing univalent copper
Dictionary.com, OneLook

curlew, n. – a shorebird with a long beak that curves down, of the genus Numenius

D

dalton, n. – unit of mass used to express the mass of atomic and subatomic particles equal to 1/12 the mass of the carbon-12 atom; another name for an atomic mass unit (named for English chemist John Dalton)
TheFreeDictionary, Encarta, YourDictionary

disembogue – pour out
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

demimonde, n. – women with wealthy lovers who have lost standing in society because of indiscretions or promiscuity; courtesans or prostitutes (an individual woman of this class is a demimondaine)
Dictionary.com

“Humiliation no longer threatens the individual who hasn’t read a book, but the one who has; reading is seen as a degrading task that may be left to a woman of the demimonde.”
-Pierre Bayard, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read

doyenne – a woman with seniority in her profession or organization (feminine form of doyen)

“Sue Carter of the University of California at Irvine is famous as the doyenne of research on this potent hormone of attachment [oxytocin], which she has studied extensively in the prairie vole.”
-Stephen Post & Jill Neimark, Why Good Things Happen to Good People

E

elegiac, adj. - expressing sorrow or mourning

empyrean – sky

“The very empyrean seemed to be a secret.”
-G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

endogenous – internally originated
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, TheFreeDictionary, Encarta

“Because the internally focused [performance assessment and evaluation] frameworks of the [community water system] sector are based on endogenous measures of performance, they narrowly asses performance in terms of core processes, which differ by [community water system].”
-Jeffrey W. Rogers & Garrick E. Louis. “A standard efficiency metric for evaluation performance of community water systems.” Journal AWWA 97.10 (2005): 79-80.

F

fissiparous, adj. – tending to split into factions

“Marxism has proved as fissiparous a philosophy as it has a political ideology.”

-Carl R. Truman, Histories and Fallacies

G

ghee – clarified butter
Dictionary.com, OneLook

glaucous - greenish blue or bluish green
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

I

inanition, n. – exhaustion from lack of nourishment; lethargy

L

lacuna – missing part (the middle syllable is pronounced like queue)

Laocöon, n. – Trojan priest who warned against accepting the horse left by the Greeks (Trojan horse); he and his sons were killed by serpent bites

lido – a beach resort or open-air swimming pool
Dictionary.com, OneLook



M

mantic – related to or having the power of divination
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

meretricious, adj. – having a flashy or vulgar allure, insincere or pretentious; characteristic of a prostitute

moue – a pout
Dictionary.com, OneLook

multitexting – the rude and dangerous activity of reading and writing text message on mobile communication devices, including e-mail message in the case of crackberry addicts, while engaged in other activities such as walking, driving, attending meetings and dining with others (from multitasking)

O

ouroborus, n. – a symbol of a snake or dragon eating its tail
Dictionary.com, OneLook

outré, adj. – unconventional or bizarre

P

patulous – spreading
Dictionary.com, TheFreeDictionary, Merriam-Webster Online, OneLook, YourDictionary

"Above the spire of St Paul’s, patulous white clouds deepened to a shade reminiscent of overwashed socks."
-Christopher Fowler, The Water Room

phenology – the study of the timing of recurring natural events
Websters, Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster


plover, n. – a shorebird having a thick neck, compact body, and pigeon-like beak, of the family Charadriidae, or a similar bird

prolegomenon, n. – scholarly preface (you can tell it is scholarly by its length)

putsch, n. – a revolt or uprising
Merriam-Webster, Encarta

R

retrosexual, n. – a man who cares little for or minimally attends to his appearance (i.e., the opposite of a metrosexual), or a man who adopts an old-fashioned masculine style (especially the suit-and-hat style of the 1950s and 1960s)
Merriam-Webster

S

sesquipedalian, adj. – multisyllabic
Merrian-Webster.com

“Do not build monuments to obfuscatory sesquipedalian tergiversation.”
-Elizabeth Slatkin in How to Write a Manual

sibilant, adj. - hissing

soidisant – self-styled, so-called, pretended (from French and pronounced in something of that style, i.e. swa-dee-zahn’)


spoor, n. – track or trail, especially of a wild animal
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster.com

“The victory always lies in our hunger for the spiritual intimacy of our union with Christ. In some since it is more than a hunger, it is a stalking—pursuing God as a safari tracks the spoor of big game”
-Calvin Miller, Into the Depths of God

stoat – the European ermine, Mustela erminea
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

suspire, v. – to utter with sighing breaths
Wordnik.com, Yahoo! Education

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame:
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
-T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

syncretistic, adj. – attempting the reconciliation of opposing principles, practices or parties

“Catholicism’s commitment to the developing cult of the saints was surly one of its great strengths during the church’s massive expansion during the fourth and fifth centuries, and the winning strategy of a somewhat syncretistic pattern of handling folk religion right down into the fifteenth century.”

-Carl R. Trueman, Histories and Fallacies

T

tergiversation, n. – a constantly changing, unclear or misleading opinion or attitude
OneLook.com



threnody, n. – a song of lamentation
traduce, v.t. – to speak maliciously or falsely, to slander or defame

V

viridescent – greenish
Dictionary.com, OneLook

vulpine – fox-like
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online


W

whinge, v. – to cry, to complain, to whine
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster

X

xanthic – yellowish
Dictionary.com, Dict.org, The Free Dictionary, Webster’s Online, Your Dictionary

Defining Noah Webster by K. Alan Snyder

Snyder, K. Alan. Defining Noah Webster: A Spiritual Biography. Washington, DC: Allegiance Press, 2002.

Noah Webster was in interesting man in interesting times. A young man during the American Revolution, he became interested in politics and went on to know many of the statesmen of that era, especially amongst his fellow Federalists . He was published the first magazine of original material in America and edited a Federalist newspaper, sometimes drawing fire from his own party for his evenhanded reporting. He is best known for writing educational materials, readers, texts, and especially his dictionary.



K. Alan Snyder covers this biographical fare in Defining Noah Webster. He is more interested in the philosophical and religious arc of Webster’s life and how his views changed, especially after his conversion to Christianity.

Webster was raised in the Congregational church of his family in Connecticut and attended Yale, which was still ostensibly a religious college at the time. (Incidentally, later in life he would help to establish Amerherst because, among other things, he found Harvard, itself originally a seminary, to be too liberal.) As he reached adulthood and had to fend for himself, he turned away from the faith and sought guidance in literature and philosophy. He is hardly the only Enlightenment-era youth to seek to perfect himself through reason .

Snyder sees Webster falling under the influence of Scottish Common Sense philosophy. After reading his book, I can’t tell you much about Common Sense philosophy, though Snyder provides just enough to follow how it appears in Webster’s activities and writings in the early part of his career. The major themes are that reason must be guided by conscience, and that as a person matures and develops reason, reason should take the drivers seat and direct his other faculties. Thus, Webster’s educational views include inculcating moral values. Common Sense also viewed political philosophy as part of moral philosophy. Webster valued character in politicians and thought foolish put public trust in people whose private morals were questionable.

While Webster’s views were not opposed to Christianity, his real faith through much of his career as an educator, author, politician, and public figure was in reason, not in Christ. As he saw his country grow and become factious and reported the horrors that developed during the French Revolution, he became disillusioned with the idea that reason, even if guided by a trained conscience, could cure people of moral shortcomings.

Webster converted to Christianity at the age of about 50, to the delight of his wife and daughters. He did not make a disillusioned retreat to religion. He was born again and the experience changed his perspective on everything. The final chapters are the meat of the book. Snyder writes about how this conversion changed Webster’s views on politics and education and influenced his dictionary.

Webster remained a staunch Federalist. However, the reasoning behind his political views changed. He found the roots of republican government in the Bible-base wisdom of America’s Christian settlers. Solid character, especially Christ-like character, became an even more important requirement for elected officials.

Before his conversion, Webster steered clear of what he saw as the overuse of the Bible in readers. Afterward, he no longer trusted natural conscience and reason. People were too prone to error and selfishness. They needed revelation from God’s Word as a reliable to guide to what is right.

These Christian views are prominent in Webster’s dictionary, though largely removed from its successors. Webster traced etymologies with the notion of finding the true meaning of a word in its origins in an Adamic tongue. His illustrations of meanings frequently reflected his Christian views.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis
The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen
Triumvirate by Bruce Chadwick

Scan Artist by Marcia Biederman

When I want to find some information, I can pull my cell phone out of my pocket and search for it using Google (or some other search engine, but probably Google). I can remember a time when that was not an option. If the information I needed wasn’t in the dictionary or encyclopedia I had at home (which was already of date in some areas), I’d have to go to the library for additional references or—heaven forbid—the morgue of a newspaper office. Getting useful information was not a trivial affair. The generation before mine that saw a pre-Internet explosion of printed information after World War II especially felt the difficulty of keeping up. Evelyn Wood was there with an answer; Marcia Biederman tells her story in Scan Artist.

Evelyn Wood did not invent speed reading. She did not even like the term. However, for decades her name and face was more strongly associated with it than any other person. Though she built her reputation on being a school teacher, she never was not a regular classroom teacher (she was a school counselor) and she was not a reading specialist. She had a master’s degree in speech, earned under the direction of a professor who a studied theater.

Theater may be the lens for looking at Wood’s career. She started writing and staging plays when she was in high school and a college undergraduate. Many of these had religious themes related to her Mormon faith. When she was in Germany, where her husband served as president of the Mormon mission in Frankfurt as the Nazis began their aggressions, she fell in love with the opera and cajoled her way into back stage of the opera house. She began bringing what she learned of stagecraft into her own productions.

Back in the U.S. the Woods put Evelyn’s theatrical skills to work as lecturers on their European experience. They changed their focus as American sentiments shifted from Germany to Britain. They also put a pretty heavy spin on the Mormon relationship with the Nazis and greatly embellished the dangers they face leaving Germany.

Evelyn Wood’s success as a seller of her speed-reading system was largely built on such theatrics and embellishments. She claimed student could read thousands of words per minute; the faster one read the better their comprehension. (The fastest people can actually read is about 900 words per minute. Anything faster is skimming, and comprehension suffers when one skims). She managed to get endorsements from senators and she encouraged, or at least never corrected, the misconception that she was tied to John F. Kennedy and his reportedly fast reading speed. (Ted Kennedy took her course as a senator, and staffers in the Kennedy, Nixon and Carter administrations took the course, including Jimmy Carter himself, though Wood was not the teacher.)

The company she started changed hands and business models several times. A lot of money was made with her name and methods, and in the sale and resale of the company, but the Woods received only a small portion of it. Even so, she was ready to promote herself, her methods and the company that still paid her a consulting fee. She slowed down, but continued to make appearances and accept interview requests even after suffering cancer and a stroke.

While one may sympathize with her, especially in her illness later in life, the Evelyn Wood presented by Biederman is not easy to like. The Wood adopted a teenage girl largely to have a live-in nanny for their natural daughter when they moved to Germany; they never really acknowledge their adopted daughter or even saw her much once she was an adult. Wood was in some ways a con artist who played on the insecurities of her marks, some who were never knocked in spite of the mounting evidence that her program was at best an overprice lesson in skimming.

Wood found a way to take advantage of the insecurity of her day. She built a brand on it. While primarily a biography of Wood, Scan Artist reveals interesting things about America of the time and the obsession with self-improvement. It has not disappeared. Speed-reading apps still claim to greatly increase both speed and comprehension. TED-talkers claim to read a book or more a day. The Internet makes it easy to acquire a shallow knowledge of almost anything quickly, so perhaps people have become satisfied with what they can learn from skimming hundreds of books a year. Deep learning and understanding remains slow and effortful.

Biederman, Marcia. Scan Artist: How Evelyn Wood Convinced the World that Speed-Reading Worked. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2019.