READING UPDATE: The Dictionary- Part 33- CÚCUTA – Language Research Service

I am happy to report that I have finished reading my dictionary! This final section not only moved quickly but also provided a few more interesting words than the last few monthly entries have. It’s a big relief to be done with this book. I don’t regret reading it; nor do I regret reading it first.

Another pleasant surprise is that I found out the exact date I started reading the dictionary back in 2014. I went back and read some of my earliest posts, which suggested that I did not start on January 1, 2014. I poked around through some old spreadsheets and discovered that my journey with Merriam & Webster began on January 13, 2014. That means I accomplished my goal of finishing the 1,600-page dictionary in fewer than 1,600 days. I wrapped it up on day 1,596. Close call.

The next steps are to finalize my rating system, assign a rating to the dictionary, and write up a formal review. Stay tuned for that. Until then, here are the final interesting words and items from my journey:

ESKILSTUNA- The –tuna at the end of this Swedish city’s name reminded me of the American version of The Office. ‘Big Tuna’ was Andy’s nickname for Jim. I chuckled when I read this word, and laughs have been few and far between with the dictionary.

KADESH-BARNEA- This is the name of a site referred to in over a dozen verses of the Hebrew Bible but the actual location of it still eludes archaeologists. If the exact location is unknown, then why list it as a bona fide geographic location? Perhaps it’s because enough archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists agree that it must have been a real place. This just struck me as a curious inclusion.

KILAUEA- I hit this word a day or two after this Hawaiian volcano began its current eruptive activity. My in-laws hope to visit Hawaii in July. Hopefully it’s not spewing so much ash at that point that it disrupts air travel to the Big Island.

MOLD- If I lived in this Welsh town, I would either move out or lobby to get the name changed. This brings to light one of my gripes with the Geographic Names section- MW doesn’t list what the names of foreign cities mean in their native language or if the name stems from a specific event, characteristic, or some other meaning. Mold might have a beautiful meaning in Welsh but I don’t know what it means. Thanks for nothing, MW.

NEW QUEBEC CRATER- In all my years as a NASA nerd, I never came across this impacted crater before. Its inclusion in my dictionary surprised me. After investigating, I found that it is a very small impact crater, notable for its shape and the fact that the crater is filled in by water. Interesting but not what I would call stunning.

PARIS- This entry was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Throughout the Geographic names section, there are several instances of multiple cities with the same name. My dictionary offers no apparent rhyme or reason as to which location comes first under such circumstances. With Paris, MW lists the Texas city first, even though the French city of Paris is (1) around 10 times more populous, (2) older by a matter of centuries, and (3) a nation’s capital city. I don’t get it.

ROSTOCK- When I was in Middle School (or it could have been 9th grade) my German class had pen pals from the city of Rostock. I don’t remember how many times I actually wrote to my pen pal, what their name was, or if they were a boy or a girl. Do they still have pen pals now? In the era of email and Facebook, I can see it being much easier but also less exciting. There’s something about getting a letter in the mail weeks after sending one yourself. Anticipation is a beautiful thing. We don’t have enough of it these days.

Language Research Service- The final page in my dictionary described this service provided by MW. If you have questions about the dates words were first used or the sources MW traces the earliest recorded use to, you can send them a letter and a self-addressed stamped envelope for their reply. They limit you to three questions per letter though, so you’ll want to stock up on stamps if you’re the inquisitive type.

Nowadays, however, MW online has a Contact Us page. This probably replaces the mail-in service. I wish I’d have known about this at the beginning of my reading journey because I had several questions along the way that I could have asked. Maybe I’ll send in my question about their ordering rational for city names.


Page Count: 1600/1600 (100.00%)

READING UPDATE: The Dictionary- Part 32- CALVIN, John – CUBANGO

Mentally, at this point, I am at all-out war with the dictionary. I had a great pace going through the first half of April and then a combination of work and personal matters came up that torpedoed my progress. I couldn’t even meet my last-ditch-effort goal of reaching a page-count below 100 by the end of the month.

But the good news is that I am 102 pages away from finishing the dictionary. The last section of the dictionary is laid out differently and not crammed full of itty-bitty text. I’ve got about 70 more pages of the Geographical Names section to fight through before I reach that point though.

Two updates ago, I wrote about the possibility of finishing the dictionary by May 19th to maintain a 1-page-per-day reading pace. That, like so many of my other reading goals for the dictionary, is no longer attainable. I’d like to think that I can finish it by the end of May but I’m not setting goals like that anymore. I’ve learned my lesson.

The Biographical Names section wasn’t as interesting as I had hoped and the Geographical Names section has been a bust so far as well. Here’s the best of the bunch for April:


CALVIN, John- I never knew that this stick-in-the-mud founder of various reformed Christian denominations was a Frenchy. He was born Jehan Cauvin in northern France. Maybe I should have known that but I’ve only ever known his anglicized name. Apparently anglicizing your name was a popular thing to do if you were a person of notoriety back in the 16th century. Weird.

CARACALLA, Marcus Aurelius-Initially, I thought that this guy might have been the Marcus Aurelius most referred to in history books but I was wrong. Apparently there were a number of Roman emperors who incorporated Marcus Aurelius into their name. Caracalla, however, is notable to me because he was 29 when he died. He co-ruled the empire with his father beginning at age 10, and took over sole rule as emperor at age 23 after having his brother murdered. This guy was emperor of the Roman Empire while he was in his 20s. That makes me look far less ambitious by comparison but at least I don’t have it out for my own family.

HOOVER, J. Edgar- Here’s another person that makes me look like a flyweight in terms of ambition. Hoover became the head of the FBI (then just called the Bureau of Investigation) at the age of 29 and held the position for just a few days shy of 48 years. Would they ever let a 29-year-old hold such a high position in government now? I doubt it.

Clinton Cabinet Members- My dictionary came out in 1996, in the final year of President Bill Clinton’s first term. I was surprised to see the names of so many of his cabinet members. I talked this one over with my wife, and her theory is that they included so many Clinton cabinet members so people would know who the current members are and how to spell their names. It’s a pretty good theory and I have no way of testing it against later versions of the dictionary, as I don’t own a W. Bush-era dictionary to poke around in. I suppose that, over time, the lower-ranking cabinet members who didn’t do anything noteworthy get dropped from the Biographical Names section. They probably have given up altogether on keeping up with President Trump’s ever-changing cabinet.

Confederate Military Men- There were a lot of Confederate names throughout the Biographical Names section, a number of whom still have US military bases named after them. Given the current push to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces, I wonder if MW has been proactive at all about removing the names of Confederate soldiers from their pages. If they haven’t already, then I wonder if they’re thinking about it or if anyone else is looking to push them for it. A commemorative statue is one thing, but is listing a historical figure who stood on the wrong side of history acceptable for the preservation of historical information or should these names be scrubbed from reference books as well?

Explorers- I was similarly surprised by the sheer number of explorers listed in the Biographical Names section. These people led tough lives, venturing out into the unknown with no guarantee of success, let alone safety. In a way, it makes me sad that we don’t have honest-to-goodness explorers anymore. We live in the era of GPS, Google Earth, and Wikipedia. Our oceans and outer space seem like the only arenas left for discovery but I have no doubt that there are still places on solid ground here on Earth capable of blowing our minds that have yet to be discovered.

CAUCACUS MOUNTAINS- The positioning of this word in my dictionary marks what I believe is only the second true error that I have come across. This entry comes after both Caucusus and Caucasus Indicus, which puts means it is not in proper alphabetical sequence. Perhaps the editor read it as Caucasus Mountains by mistake. It’s a minor error but an error nonetheless.


Page Count: 1498/1600 (93.63%)
Countdown to Signs and Symbols: 71pages