When this theme arose last year, I imagined a dessert island. It was a good place to get stranded. There was custard and, legend has it, rhubarb crumble. This year I am feeling, sadly, a little less pudding. My partner in cake is no longer around and I'm off my tea loaf. But enough of my soggy semolina...
I would want only one title with me on the desert island. Currently it runs to 20 volumes, contains 22,000 pages, and weighs 140lbs. Behold, the mighty tome which is the Oxford English Dictionary!
Blackpool Library Service has signed up to give every one of its members online access to the OED online and I feel that this fact should be advertised more often. For me, it is worth joining the library for this feature alone. Hours and days can be happily resigned to history while dallying among nykins (sweethearts) and babbarts (hares), kichels (small cakes (damn, they snuck in again)) and stushies (disturbances). It's like getting to know loads of interesting people without having to feign an interest in their preoccupation with cake...
Behind every word is the story of its origin (as far as it can reasonably be traced) and a selection of uses. To support the historical context and usage, there are excerpts from diary entries and newspaper clippings, novels, novellas and scientific journals.
For a poet, what more could you possibly need to while away your remaining days? To take a random example, below is the partial entry for a single word, nonced into life by the exquisite Charles Dodgson:
nyctograph, n.
Pronunciation:
Brit.
/ˈnɪktə(ʊ)ɡrɑːf/
A device invented by Charles Dodgson
(‘Lewis Carroll’) with which a person can record ideas (esp. those
remaining after sleep) at night in bed without fully waking up.
1891 ‘L. Carroll’ Diary 24 Oct.
(1953)
II. xiv. 486
Today [sc. 24 Sept.] I conceived the idea of having a series of squares,
cut out in card, and devising an alphabet, of which each letter could
be made of lines along the edges of the squares, and dots at the
corners... I shall call it ‘The Typhlograph’. (24/10/91. Instead of
‘typhlograph’ I have adopted ‘Nyctograph’ at the suggestion of Warner).
And here is what I make of it:
Nyctograph
Nyct slips stars behind my peepers
Locks them under heavy lashes
If I write before I wake
Those stars quick Nyct is sure to take
Straight lines to fish
Round spots for bait
Square box to store
Starlight I'll make.
And here is what I make of it:
Nyctograph
Nyct slips stars behind my peepers
Locks them under heavy lashes
If I write before I wake
Those stars quick Nyct is sure to take
Straight lines to fish
Round spots for bait
Square box to store
Starlight I'll make.