Tsoghik Grigoryan’s name became famous for those interested in English in 2002 when the 21-year-old author published her first dictionary “English-Armenian Synonyms”. Today her second dictionary has already been published under the name of “English-Armenian Dictionary of Synonymic Groups”. The book has been written for 6 years. It is the first in its type and has a number of peculiarities. It includes three thousand headwords with their synonyms.

“English is reach with polysemantic words, and in many cases the synonyms are difficult the understand for non-native speakers. In this book every polysemantic word is represented with its synonyms and examples of usage”, the author mentioned. One of the peculiarities of the book is that it will help the non-native speakers to think English, to enrich their vocabulary and to get acquainted with 300 American, English, as well as a number of the other famous European writers.

At the same time it can serve as a dictionary of English sayings and winged expressions. There are over 150 English sayings and winged expressions in the book. The Dictionary is meant for students, translators and those who want to deeply study the language.

By the way, author of two dictionaries 25-year-old Tsoghik Grigoryan is member of the AELTA.

Source - http://www.a1plus.am/en/?page=issue&id=36937

A foreman who read the definitions of several words out loud from a dictionary didn’t prejudice jurors unfairly against a motorist who was then convicted of second-degree murder in a fatal car accident, the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

The motorist, William Bauberger, testified he had consumed more than 10 beers over a 5 1/2-hour period at a Super Bowl party in 2003 before he started driving. Witnesses say Bauberger’s Cadillac was traveling in the wrong direction on U.S. Highway 421 in Forsyth County when he collided with another car. A passenger in the other car, Carol Foy, died from her injuries.

During a lunch break in the deliberations, the foreman went to the public library and returned with a dictionary. He read the definitions of several words contained within the jury instructions and the trial court’s definition of “malice,” considered an element necessary to convict Bauberger of second-degree murder. Another juror acknowledged he had looked up “malice” in a dictionary at home before deliberations.

The juror information came out after Bauberger was convicted of second-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury. The trial judge said the jury’s conduct was improper but upheld the verdict because there was no reasonable possibility it would have been different absent the dictionary.

Bauberger appealed, with his attorney arguing the conduct violated his constitutional right to an impartial jury and to confront witnesses against him.

Writing the majority opinion, Judge Rick Elmore said the affidavits didn’t appear to contain “extraneous information,” or information that reaches a juror without being introduced in evidence that could have prejudiced the case.

“The definition of words in our standard dictionaries has been considered a matter of common knowledge which the jury is supposed to possess,” Elmore wrote. He also said the definitions didn’t discredit Bauberger’s case because “it concerned legal terminology, not evidence developed at trial.”

Judge Ann Marie Calabria joined the 2-1 majority opinion.

In the dissent, Judge Martha Geer suggested the dictionary definitions may have confused jurors about the difference between involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder. The definitions amounted to jury instruction outside the presence of the defendant, which is a constitutional right, she said.

“A jury is not permitted to engage in a private investigation of the law or to consult outside sources to untangle what the trial judge meant in his instructions,” Geer wrote in siding for a new trial for Bauberger. “Yet, that is precisely what the jury did in this criminal case.”

Source - http://www.fayettevillenc.com/local/article_ap?id=81869

Brookes is not an environmentalist partial to the wood pigeon, but instead editor of the Chambers Dictionary, and is seeking to keep words from disappearing in the publisher’s next edition which is slated for release in August.

“We’ve resisted the temptation for tossing words out,” he said Monday at the London Book Fair.

Also on the save list are: jobernowl (blockhead), logodaedalus (someone skilled in the manipulative use of words), incompossible (incapable of co-existing) and supernaculum (to the last drop), the kinds of words typically omitted by one-volume dictionaries once they fall out of usage.

The Chambers Dictionary, published in Scotland, is favored by puzzlers, writers and language-lovers for its pithy approach, such as defining “eclair” as a cake long in shape but short in duration.

Brookes also sees a market for its antiquarian approach in a culture taken with yesteryear, evidenced by widespread enthusiasm for old buildings and genealogy.

“We’ve decided to provide a kind of museum of language,” Brookes said.

LONDON (Reuters) - Ian Brookes is trying to rescue the zoozoo from extinction.

Brookes is not an environmentalist partial to the wood pigeon, but instead editor of the Chambers Dictionary, and is seeking to keep words from disappearing in the publisher’s next edition which is slated for release in August.

“We’ve resisted the temptation for tossing words out,” he said on Monday at the London Book Fair.

Also on the save list are jobernowl (blockhead), logodaedalus (someone skilled in the manipulative use of words), incompossible (incapable of co-existing) and supernaculum (to the last drop), the kinds of words typically omitted by one-volume dictionaries once they fall out of usage.

The Chambers Dictionary, published in Scotland, is favoured by puzzlers, writers and language-lovers for its pithy approach, such as defining “eclair” as a cake long in shape but short in duration.

Brookes also sees a market for its antiquarian approach in a culture taken with yesteryear, evidenced by widespread enthusiasm for old buildings and genealogy.

“We’ve decided to provide a kind of museum of language,” Brookes said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The music called the blues can express emotions with unmistakable clarity, but some of the words, whether sung by 1930s Mississippi Delta sharecroppers or big-city electric-guitar heroes, can be pretty obscure.

Hunting down the origins and meanings of those words was the mission of New Jersey rock musician and journalist Debra DeSalvo, and the result, “The Language of the Blues,” is one of the wittiest, bawdiest and most fascinating dictionaries ever.

In an interview, DeSalvo said the idea for the book came when she was an associate editor at Blues Revue magazine. “Talking to a lot of artists, I realized there were a lot of words that I thought I knew what they meant. You sort of assume you know what mojo means, or voodoo — and you really don’t.”

She added, “I thought it would be really cool to investigate this, and, more importantly, ask the artists directly what these words mean.”

Amply footnoted, “The Language of the Blues” draws on many scholarly and not so scholarly sources including interviews with the musicians themselves, among them Dr. John (Mac Rebennack, who also contributed the foreword), B.B. King, Hubert Sumlin and Robert Jr. Lockwood.

“The Language of the Blues” is a book made for random browsing just for fun, as well as for looking up facts. Like any good dictionary, it starts with A and ends with Z.

Alcorub, “the drink of last resort for desperate alcoholics,” gets the book rolling with a little history lesson that manages to mention Kitty Dukakis (wife of former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis), Prohibition and rocker/blueswoman Bonnie Raitt.

Raitt reminisces about a time when it was her job to make sure the great Son House got enough liquor to want to play but not so much he couldn’t remember how.

Zuzu, “southern slang for a cookie,” is perhaps the most wholesome word in the entire book, and the last.

In between alcorub and zuzu, definitions for black cat bone, black dog, dust my broom, jelly roll, rock, rock ‘n’ roll and roll may surprise, delight or offend even the most die-hard blues fan.

Many of the words and definitions in the book are too sexual to repeat here. They contain many surprises.

All the entries cite musicians and songs that used the words. The book also includes many photographs of blues musicians past and present.

AFRICAN ORIGINS

Arabic, American Indian, Caribbean and Irish influences crop up in the book but it was Africa whose culture the ancestors of blues singers brought over as uprooted slaves.

African words enriched American language through the blues and the varieties of music the blues fed, from jazz to pop.

Slang usages of such words as cat, chick, dig, fuzz, hip and rock all appear to have African etymological roots, DeSalvo writes.

Hoodoo — as opposed to voodoo, the ancient religion born in Africa — is defined in the book as “an African American system of folklore” with African, American Indian and European sources. It is in hoodoo practice that a mojo — a charm, or “a prayer in a bag” — is used.

But blues singers do not necessarily believe in hoodoo, DeSalvo said, even if they use the word.

“They still use it because any musician, you’re looking for colorful language. I asked people if they thought Muddy Waters (who sang ‘I Got My Mojo Working’) really believed in hoodoo, and they went, ‘No,’” she said, shaking her head emphatically.

DeSalvo, who has co-authored books about yoga and investing, fell in love with the blues growing up in Milwaukee. “I would see these incredible Chicago blues players come through,” she said. Above all, it was guitarist Son Seals who changed her life.

“I was riveted. He would play one note and it wrung more emotion out of me and the whole room than the really fast players I would hear. I was just completely stunned,” she said.

The “aesthetics that are embodied in the blues” have deeply affected America, she said. “This idea that the primary goal is to access an emotion has had a huge effect on the vitality of American culture.”

But she made no claims to being an expert. “No. I’m an enthusiast,” she said firmly.

“I worked with a lot of different sources and I tried my best to be accurate,” DeSalvo said, but she still expects lexicographers, musicologists and other varieties of passionate nit-pickers to come at her in droves.

“I’m sure I’m going to hear from all of them,” she said wryly. Actually, she would welcome their suggestions.

“My fantasy is to do a second edition,” she said.

Thousands of third-graders from Boca Raton to the Glades have Rotary International to thank the next time they need to spell a word or look up a definition.

Rotary’s District 6930 launched a literacy project this fall to distribute dictionaries to third-graders from Boca Raton to the south, up to Titusville in Brevard County to the north, said Betsy Owen, of Delray Beach, a retired teacher and the assistant district governor and chairwoman of the project.

“Vocabulary is an essential part of the learning process,” she said. “All of the major tests, PSAT, SAT, ACT, FCAT, have a language component. Rotary District 6930 wants to help the children in any way they can to do better on the FCAT. We felt this was a good first step.”

About 24,000 dictionaries were distributed to 156 public and private schools, Owen said. “We had hoped to cover all of the third-graders throughout the district. We have no way of knowing if this was accomplished,” she said. “We do know that there are some schools in the southern part of Palm Beach County that have not received them as yet. There are some clubs that are trying to finish this goal.”

The clubs raised the money from events, such as golf and fishing tournaments, auctions, pancake breakfasts, spaghetti dinners, derby duck races, bingo and dances, she said. “They could also receive a matching grant from Rotary District 6930 to help their efforts,” Owen said.

Most of the clubs bought dictionaries from The Dictionary Project, a nonprofit organization in Charleston, S.C., whose goal is to put a dictionary in the hands of every youngster who needs one, according to its Web site.

Owen pointed out that spell check on computers doesn’t end the need for dictionaries, because some children don’t have computer access.

“That is the point. Everyone thinks that all of the children in Florida can afford a computer and not all can,” she said. “They cannot take the computers they use at school home, so they would not have the benefit of spell check while they are doing their homework.

“This is a dictionary for life. It’s not just for looking up words. It has an atlas, chemistry tables, grammar and punctuation rules, the capitals and states,” Owen said. “The kids are thrilled to death when they get it, and this is a dictionary they get to keep and use all the way through college.”

In Palm Beach County, Rotary Clubs distributed the dictionaries in their communities.

About 80 students at Boca Raton Elementary School received their dictionaries just before the holidays, Principal Peter Slack said.

“They were really excited about them. They are already using them, and they are personalized, so they can take them home at the end of the year,” he said.

The students liked the extras in the dictionary, such as the American Sign Language chart in the back of the book.

“They thought that was really cool. They went right to the back and started to look things up,” he said.

Nancy Owens, a member of the Delray Beach Rotary Club, is a retired school principal and helped her club distribute the dictionaries at schools there.

Owens, who lives in Boca Raton, said when they distribute the dictionaries, members show the students what’s in them, give them a word to look up and the children write their names in them. The dictionary also has charts for confused and misused words and rules for spelling.

“It’s a really important learning tool. It helps them hone their vocabulary skills,” she said. “The children are most appreciative that they have their very own dictionary, one that belongs to them.”

The dictionary program will wrap up by the end of the school year. “We hope to continue the project every year in the same way,” Betsy Owen said.

If you have an appreciation for sniglets — that is, words so useful they should be in dictionaries but aren’t — you’re probably just the kind of person Merriam Webster hopes to draw to its online Open Dictionary.

At http://www3.merriam-webster.com/opendictionary/, Merriam-Webster encourages “wordies” everywhere to submit new terms for adoption in upcoming Webster dictionaries. Submission guidelines mandate that entries not reflect words already published in other dictionaries, be useful and socially responsible and reflect no political agenda.

This invitational is a fitting approach to updating dictionaries, says MTSU professor Dr. Aleka Blackwell, who brings an extensive linguistics background to teach a course called “The Science of Words.”

“Change is a well-known fact about language,” Blackwell says. “By soliciting input on lexical changes from speakers of the language, dictionary writers strive to keep abreast of these changes in the language.”

Most words in the vast Open Dictionary collection are new or obscure utterances that have shown up in print in one or more media outlets, but others make their world premier at the site. Merriam-Webster recognizes the two types of entries, issuing a preference for the former. “‘Real words’ are words that you’ve seen or heard used by others,” it declares. “‘Coinages’ (words you’ve invented on your own or with friends) are fun, but they might be less useful to fellow Open Dictionary users, and may be removed. Particularly useful and clever coinages with clear and well-written definitions might find a permanent place in the Open Dictionary.”

Some Open Dictionary entries reflect pop culture phenomena. Napoleon Dynamite’s “flippin’” shows up as an adjective used to inject emphasis. “Flippin’ sweet,” for example, translates loosely to “extraordinarily good.” “Carbohydrophobia” expresses a fear of carbohydrates in one’s diet, as has been popular in recent years. “Tiggerific” — meaning “wonderful” — has been submitted by the mother of a 3-year-old Tigger fan.

Word-combo constructions appearing at the Open Dictionary site include bouncebackability and chillaxin (chillin’+ relaxin’).

Two days a week, Blackwell’s students gather in MTSU’s Business and Applied Sciences building to discuss and discover evolving words of the English language. As observers of the “science of new words,” they take note of unexpected words heard outside of class.

“Pregurgitated” is one Blackwell has heard at home. Her husband, Stephen Blackwell, uses it when he complains that the couple’s son has been given too-easy worksheets for homework. The word means “ready-made and oversimplified.”

Student Jennifer Moorman uses “fram” as a verb. A long-standing staple in her family, this word means to collide or strike accidentally. “It’s not a real word,” Moorman admits, but she finds it useful to describe a non-malicious hit.

“Jola” is a favorite of Tamara Somers, who works for Murfreesboro City Schools when she’s not in classes at MTSU. She has heard kids in the 8-to-12 age group use this slang wherever “whatever” is appropriate. It is, to use a 1980s dictionary inductee, a dis.

Laura Looch has enlightened the Science of Words class with a word she hears from her husband, Jacques Looch. “Perkaktanate,” she says, means “to talk a bunch of crap when you’re drunk.” The Looches word is based on the root “kak,” which she says equates to “crap” in the Southern African language Afrikaans.

If terms like these seem too bizarre to ever appear in lexical print, consider the success of “multislacking,” meaning the act of using a workplace computer for time-wasting activities unrelated to the job. Multislacking was recognized by the American Dialect Society as a 1998 Most Useful Word of the Year and now appears in Oxford American Dictionaries.

Blackwell notes that everyday people using the language, not dictionary editorial staff, are responsible for evolution in language. “The vocabulary of a language grows, to a large extent, as new concepts are introduced into a culture. New concepts require new labels … Dictionary writers can’t possibly know all the new words entering the language, and (the Open Dictionary online) method of collecting this information is an effective approach to collecting preliminary data on lexical innovations.”

All third-grade students in the Back Mountain area were presented with their own copy of a dictionary. The Dallas Rotary Club dictionary project committee distributed more than 500 books to Dallas, Lake-Lehman and Northwest school districts and the Gate of Heaven School, Dallas. Rotary clubs across the country participate in this annual event giving thousands of dictionaries to young readers. From left with third-grade students, Dallas Elementary: Bill Nafus, chairman, dictionary project, Dallas Rotary Club; Sandy Peoples, club president; and Lee Ann Conway, teacher. Absent from photo: Traci Kempa, John Rhoads and Art Peoples.

David Kamp’s previous book, The Rock Snob’s Dictionary, was in and of itself a small masterpiece of rock snobbery. The Film Snob’s Dictionary smells like a publisher-mandated sequel and doesn’t work as well. If you’re a film snob, you’ll keep noticing nagging little mistakes.

Office Space is not a film-snob cause célèbre and their definition of mise-en-scène is a few degrees off-plumb. In their list of similar names and titles, the authors feel the need to pair William Wyler and William Wellman. No one ever had trouble distinguishing icy control freak Wyler (The Letter, The Best Years Of Our Lives) from rowdy low-comedy vaudevillian Wellman (Roxie Hart).

You do need to sort out William Wyler from the like-named and equally Oscar-lauded Billy Wilder. And anyone who claims that Howard Hawks’s films “bore no authorial signature” hasn’t seen those films.

That said, Kamp and co-author Lawrence Levi astutely give correct shout-outs to snob icons like critic Manny Farber and Manitoba auteur Guy Maddin. They amusingly note that the pace of Tarkovsky’s films makes watching them “less an entertainment decision than a lifestyle choice.”

This book is high-end magazine writing (portions of both dictionaries originally appeared in Vanity Fair), which means it’s enjoyable but lacks commitment. In The Rock Snob’s Dictionary you got the sense that Kamp might be willing to fight over some of the assertions, but here he often seems to be repeating second-hand opinions or simply acting as a provocateur.

Source - http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2006-03-02/books_reviews2.php

During President Clinton’s political career it was obvious he was using a different dictionary than the rest of America. You might recall two of the most memorable entries in the Clinton Dictionary:

sex-ual rela-tions, n. 1. as in “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky…”

is, v. 1. as in “it depends on what the meaning of the word is, is….”

Recent events lead me to believe that Bill isn’t the only one studying the pages of the Clinton Dictionary. I think it has become a family heirloom.

Sen. Hillary Clinton has been widely quoted in the past few months stating that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Most political observers believe that Hillary has shrewdly modified her pro-abortion record, reaching out to red voters as she prepares for a run at the presidency in 2008. Well, there is no doubt she is shrewd and is attempting to reach out to red voters. But red voters should be wary of accepting the extended hand. They are sure to find that sleight-of-hand is what Hillary really offers them.

Why am I so cynical? Well, let’s count just a few of the many reasons we all ought to be cynical about the likelihood that Sen. Clinton means rare in the sense that the word is defined in the dictionaries we rely on.

First, Hillary has been outspoken in her support of abortion throughout her entire adult life. One quote among many will serve as a representative example of her true feelings:

“I am and always have been pro-choice, and that is not a right any of us should take for granted. There are a number of forces at work in our society that would try to turn back the clock and undermine a woman’s right to chose, and [we] must remain vigilant.” (New York Times, Jan 22, 2000)

Next, there is her voting record. In five years in the Senate, Sen. Clinton has voted for every pro-abortion bill and against every pro-life bill that crossed her desk. Her Senate report card is 100 percent pro-abortion. Valedictorian. Top of the class. She even voted to preserve the practice of partial-birth abortion.

And finally, the methods she proposes — sex education, counseling and contraception — won’t even come close to making abortion rare. Hillary and other proponents of this approach argue that it will reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and therefore the need for abortion. Theoretically it makes sense, but unfortunately theory doesn’t stand a chance against raging hormones. Don’t get me wrong. I think we should do everything we can in the way of education and contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancy. But I don’t believe such efforts are going to significantly decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies in America.

We’ve been teaching sex education in our schools, even handing out free condoms in many of them, for decades. I’m sure these important efforts have prevented many unwanted pregnancies. However, approximately 1.3 million abortions are still performed each and every year in this country. Can sex education courses be improved enough to make a significant dent in the number of unwanted pregnancies? Can condoms and other forms of birth control be any more accessible than they are today? I think we have likely gained nearly all of the benefits these programs have to offer. And even if we made some improvement, how much more impact would it have? It would take nearly a 25 percent improvement to drop the number of abortions to 1 million per year. I don’t think a 25 percent improvement is likely, and even if achieved, 1 million abortions is not a number most of us would classify as rare.

I believe that as long as the safety net of abortion is available, attention in sex education class and rigorous adherence to birth control will be considered optional. Sure, it is inconvenient to have an abortion, but apparently, when hormones are raging, the inconvenience of abortion is unfortunately forgotten in the pleasure of the moment. The only way to truly make abortion rare is to make it unavailable for purposes of convenience. If abortion was limited to cases of preserving the mother’s life, rape, and incest, it truly would be rare. And the risk of an unwanted pregnancy with no safety net to break the fall would certainly focus greater attention on sex education and the need for contraception.

But that isn’t what Hillary has in mind. Next time you hear her say that abortion should be safe, legal and rare, remember she’s getting her definitions from the Clinton Dictionary. What she really has in mind is that abortion should be available anytime, anyplace, for any reason. That might be rare in her book, but not mine.

Source - http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/bwilson/060228