I like coming across new words in the material I read. While it can get a bit tiring at times to have to look up, say, a few words a page (*clears throat loudly and looks pointedly at Lovecraft*), it’s always good to learn new things, and words are included.
What I don’t like is looking up a word and the definition I find explains what the word is in such a way that is completely helpful. Sometimes to the point of wondering why the publisher would even bother putting it into print.
As you may expect, I just happen to have an example.
I was reading the excellent Nice Try by Josh Gondelman, and in it he used the word “haberdashery.” Now, I’ve seen that word before. And I know for a fact that I’ve previously looked up what it is. Probably, I admit, a number of times, because it’s one of those rare enough words that I can go a decade or more without seeing it in print or hearing it used, so paired with my crappy memory, I don’t recall what it is from one occasion of seeing it to the next.
For some reason I often think it has something to do with specific kind of meats and maybe cheeses, like a specialty butcher, or somesuch. I have zero idea where I ever got that notion. If I ever get a time machine, I’ll have to figure out when that became a thing my brain glomed onto and remedy the issue. I mean, that’ll be low on the list of priorities to accomplish with the time machine, but it’s going to be on a long enough check list.
In any case, here’s where my frustration lies: I’m reading the book on my Kobo, and one nice aspect of this particular e-reader–I’d assume it’s on others as well, but I’m not familiar enough with any other brands to know–is that you can hold your finger on a word and it will automatically look it up for you via a quick wifi dictionary search, which it will display the results of on the page.
So yes, please, for haberdashery.
And a moment later, here’s what the screen showed me:
hab-er-dash-ery [-,da-sh(ə)rē] -n
1. goods sold by a haberdasher
2. a haberdasher’s shop
Well, now it’s all clear, isn’t it?
Oh, wait, no, it isn’t at all. Because evidently the publisher of that dictionary genuinely thought that someone who wanted to find out what a haberdashery is would be sufficiently informed by telling them that it’s a shop owned by… a haberdasher.
Now, maybe it’s just me, but what’s more likely: That someone looking up the word haberdashery knows what a haberdasher is and is genuinely taught something new when informed it’s the store of said shop owner, or that the person looking up the word is confused about the whole core of the word, and so informing the person that it’s a shop owned by a haberdasher only serves to make the person then look up what that means?
It seems to me that a far more efficient way to have done this would’ve been something like this (spoiler warning if for some deeply weird reason you don’t want to accidentally find out what a haberdashery is):
- goods sold by a) a dealer in men’s clothing (North America) or in small items used for sewing (British), see haberdasher
- a shop owned by above dealer
That seems to be a more effective way to explain what it is that’s being looked up while also explaining what the core word–likely the unclear part–means as well. It’s also more efficient, of course, because this way the person unclear on both what a haberdashery and a haberdasher are (so weird!) will get the answer with just one search instead of two.
I don’t know what dictionary the Kobo uses or if there’s any way to change that default, but I’ll be taking some time not only to look into that, but also to look around a bit for what virtual–and hopefully physical–dictionary has the best explanation of words detailed in the most practical way.
This all may seem like a small thing to some of you, but as someone who deals with words a fair bit day to day (in reading, writing, helping my daughter expand her vocabulary, etc.), finding what words and terms I need to know in the most efficient way possible matters. And sorry, mystery dictionary as yet to be determined and hopefully jettisoned, but looking up one word only to have to look up another from the definition provided for the first isn’t super helpful.