Century-old dictionary is a page-turner

Do you own a dictionary anymore?

Most of us have shed this extra weight from our lives, knowing that these hefty books can be matched by an app on our cellphones if we need to search for the meaning of an esoteric word.

And that’s why the latest reference book displayed at the Magers &  Quinn Booksellers in Minneapolis is such a curiosity.

Weighing about 25 pounds, this beast of a dictionary looks authoritative. It’s bedecked in a worn corduroy binding in a shade of dark chocolate. Wise and verbose, it’s also more than 100 years old.

“It’s almost comical,” acknowledged the bookstore’s marketing manager, Annie Metcalf, when a patron exclaimed upon seeing the opus. When the book is closed, its spine measures more than 9 inches tall.

The last, oh, maybe couple thousand pages of the book are actually a “supplement,” apparently because “they decided there weren’t enough words” in the first volume, she joked.

CENTURY DICTIONARY

Known as a Century Dictionary, the book (published in 1914) found its way to Magers &  Quinn in recent weeks when a customer decided to part with it. It was a busy day, so the booksellers didn’t get a chance to ask her about how it came into her possession. They didn’t think it would be easy to resell, so they took it off her hands and now display it on a rickety end table.

The staff — who naturally appreciate books with a back story — think this antiquarian piece of merchandise is pretty cool. The item is not for sale, but for the public’s enjoyment.

You can flip through the thin, delicate pages and see how much the English language has changed, and how much it has stayed the same. The entry for the word “give,” for example, goes on for pages. It quotes the Bible and Milton and explains the meaning of various offshoots, like “give away,” “give one’s hand,” and the no-longer-trending “give one a flap with a foxtail.” (Definition: to make a fool of someone.)

Black-and-white illustrations offer visual depictions of everything from the human pelvis to the black-backed jackal.

Shockingly, this version of the Century Dictionary is abridged. When it was first published in New York near the end of the 19th century, it came in six alphabetized volumes, a hybrid between a dictionary and an encyclopedia.

One of the leading scholars on the history of this reference source is linguist Anatoly Liberman of the University of Minnesota.

“It’s a splendid dictionary,” said Liberman, who consults it every day to research word origins and definitions. “It has aged very well, unlike most of us.”

While you wouldn’t want to consult this dictionary to catch up on the latest in nuclear physics, Liberman says, it still has its use. “If you are interested in cockroaches, probably not too much has been discovered since 1914.”

A FEUD OVER ‘COCKNEY’

For the history buffs: The Century Dictionary was seen as a contemporary rival to the Oxford English Dictionary; a feud over the root of the word “cockney” launched open warfare between British and American lexicographers.

Today, of course, the Century Dictionary is more or less forgotten, Liberman concedes. Some surveys suggest that book culture overall is down, as well. In a Gallup poll from 2021, for instance, Americans reported reading an annual average of 12.6 books in any format, down from 18.5 in 1999.

Comic Sheng Wang has a bit about how bookstores used to be a source of wonder for him.

“When I was a kid, I used to walk into a bookstore like, ‘Look at all this stuff I’m gonna learn,’ ” he said. “As a grown-up I walk into a bookstore like, ‘Look at all this stuff I’m never gonna know.’

“It’s hard to see your ignorance alphabetized,” he lamented.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF CURIOSITY

But what do we lose with the decline of physical copies of books, dictionaries and even newspapers? Yes, all of these things exist online, but the digital versions play more to a person’s active curiosity than their passive curiosity. (With a newspaper whose pages one can actually turn, for example, people may be more likely to scan a story they’d have guessed they wouldn’t find interesting.) We’re blessed to live in a world where digital and paper versions can still co-exist, where we can access information when and how we want it.

The Century Dictionary hearkens to a time when we assumed almost all of life’s answers could be found in a book. Today, it doesn’t purport to hold a candle to the vastness of the internet or the voracious growth of AI.

“It’s outdated, like any reference book in the world,” Liberman said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s useless.”

Magers &  Quinn, an independently owned bookstore nestled in a challenged part of Minneapolis, is humming along, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. If you stop by, take a couple of minutes to consult a century-old elder dressed up in corduroy. You might discover something you didn’t know you were curious about.