Ted Wilson Reviews the World #98

THE DICTIONARY
★★★★★ (3 out of 5)

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing the dictionary.

The dictionary is a big book that lists all the words and also offers definitions for each word. Sometimes it doesn’t have all the words because there isn’t room for them or because the words are controversial and no one can decide if they are really words or not. One way to save space would be to not list the obvious words, like “dog.” Anyone who doesn’t know what a dog is probably can’t read anyway.

One funny thing you can do with the dictionary – if it’s in a public place like the library – is to open it up to a page that has a word like “penis” or “bitch” and then watch from afar as an unsuspecting passerby happens to notice it. Ha ha.

Also, dictionaries are good for bursting cysts. Because dictionaries are so big and heavy they can be slammed onto a cyst and cause it to vanish!

I tried making my own dictionary once because I wanted to be a published author. It proved much more difficult than I’d imagined. I didn’t want to plagiarize the other dictionaries so I had to come up with all the words and definitions on my own. It turns out I only know 48,603 words. Some of the definitions I had to make up because I wasn’t completely certain what the words meant. I called my dictionary Wilson’s Abridged.

The weirdest of the dictionaries is the Scrabble dictionary. Not only does it offer no definitions, it lists all kind of weird words you’re pretty sure aren’t words at all but your Scrabble opponent claims he or she uses all the time. Like “za” as a shortened version of “pizza.” I’m certain I’ve never ever heard anyone anywhere say, “Let’s order za for dinner,” but the Scrabble dictionary says it’s a word, so who’s to argue with a dictionary produced by a board game company?

Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing ice.