What is more tedious is know that your old google sheet
links disappearing than reading 30 plus dictionaries and writing 45k plus
pages.
Dictionaries and lexicography have some undiscovered
treasures despite all advanced technologies.
To the writers of Dictionaries, the stories of writing
Dictionaries of any sort , even small pocketbooks of vocabulary on a specific
subject or topic Lexicography and Etymology are too personal, tempting
and engaging though ironically dictionaries are not literary pieces with credit
to authors.
Every lexicographer, starting from Samuel Johnson have
penned down their journey, some of them too elegantly. The best one, in my
opinion is written by the lexicographer Kory Stamper the book titled ‘WORD
BY WORD-The Secret Life of Dictionaries’. One can keeping reading it N
number of times for its excellent prose.
Of course, with the modern
technologies access to words that one wants is relatively easier and
interesting, still, the ocean of lexicography has some undiscovered treasures.
During few periods of
post-surgery [ I have had many] convalescence when dictionaries were the most
comfortable silent companions.
Reading them, not using them as
mere reference books, is never ending and far more engaging than books and
music.
Then, I ventured to scribble my
version of Reverse Dictionary of Adjectives [ the rational is given in
the first link below] in some 45k plus sheets of paper was also interesting and
engaging.
However, I had the delayed
luxury of access to a computer and key board, when my typing skills visually in
terms of speed was as fast as the elephant riding a bicycle in circus tents as
I would look for letters and land my broad clumsy fingers on the key board and
to top it all every five minutes I must not forget to save what I have typed
because it was LOTUS software in early 90s followed by copying them in
floppy disks. Then I redid the whole thing in FOXPRO and waited well
past Y2K for excel sheets. Later, managed to migrate to Google Sheets to share
the link in a blog.
I remained in blissful ignorance that the links would remain
there intact but was surprised to find recently that they were not opening. I
had to redo and post new links.
However, as a museum curator I have kept the old links in
the blog.
Blog link introduction:-
https://adjectives-balayogi.blogspot.com/2010/05/adjective-finder-or-reverse-dictionary.html
Sample entry:-
https://adjectives-balayogi.blogspot.com/2010/05/for-words-starting-with-letter-b-that_13.html
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