BOOK OF THE DAY: John Murray reviews Reading The Oxford English Dictionary (One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages)By Ammon Shea Allen Lane, 223pp, £12.99
YOU COULD be feeling all-overish and micturient after spending too much time with a wine-knight and it may be a contributor to your rubicundity but such is the price you pay for being a jive-ass.
I would like the reader at this point to gasp in admiration at my grasp of the English language and wonder aloud at the meaning of some of the nouns and adjectives I have just used. I fear, though, that you may, instead, dismiss me as an inspirado, a mediocrist and a mafflard.
Let me explain. The little-known words above come from a book that is the product of a marathon reading effort by New York furniture mover Ammon Shea. Last year, this self-confessed vocabularian, another word from the book, decided to read all 21,730 pages and 20 volumes of the Oxford English Dictionaryfrom start to finish and write a book about it afterwards.
The book recounts his reading experience, traces some of the history of English dictionaries, and contains a lexicon of rarely used words that the author found "strange and lovely" along the way.
The reading bit took the author a year to complete with sittings of between eight and 10 hours a day punctuated by hourly coffee breaks. It is clear that he did not see it as a chore and he compares it with the experience of reading any great literary work.
Within hours of beginning the long read, Shea was complaining of eye strain and headaches but quickly discounted a friend's suggestion that he undertake the reading with the help of an overhead projector.
Later in the book, he tells us that he also decided not to read it online because "a computer has never provided me with that delicious anticipatory sense that I am about to be utterly and rhapsodically transported by the words within it".
I doubt if a dictionary has ever had such love and attention lavished on it.
Shea traces his love of books and the words within them to his early childhood and his parents' distaste for too much television watching. His father, though, was not always happy to see his son's nose stuck in books and, on occasion, booted him out the door to encourage him to play with the other children. But, undeterred, Shea just indulged in some outdoor reading having walked for miles to escape his father's clutches.
But this book marks his graduation from mere bookworm to dictionary devourer. The commentary on his year-long reading exercise is the least compelling part of it although it is informative in parts. His visit to possibly the world's greatest collector of dictionaries, introduced to us as just "my friend Madeline", is a highlight and makes his own interest in them positively minor league. But there are less enthralling bits of information in there too. Is it necessary for us to know, for instance, that he became intolerant of people making noise in the local library where some of his reading was done?
Nonetheless, the words Shea plucks from the Oxford English Dictionaryare worth the price of the book on their own. Through them, we are able to create a host of readily identifiable characters, ranging from grinagogs to vicambulists. Some of the words are almost crying out to be dusted down and brought back to replace their far less lovely modern-day equivalents.
Who could possibly object to the return of the verb upchuck instead of vomit, and wouldn't the return of the adjective monodynamic allow us to put down once and for all that well-known animal, the one-trick pony?
As for the words that I introduced you to in the earlier part of this review, I should in all decency tell you what they mean but that would be to ruin the fun. Instead, you have two options. You can wade your way through 20 volumes of the Oxford English Dictionaryor buy Ammon Shea's delightful book.
• John Murray presents Morning Irelandand The Businesson RTÉ Radio One. His book, Now That's What I Call Jargon, will be published by New Island in November